


Shan'hal'lak

by GenericUsername01



Series: personal favorites [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, I would never characterize him this way otherwise, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mentions of implied past rape, Pre-Reform Vulcan, Slavery, also gaila's alive and in tos because I said so, au where surak was born hundreds of years later, but that's just cause of prereform culture being barabaric, disabled jim, sarek is the worst in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-02-09 18:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 44,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12894042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: Shan'hal'lak (shon-ha-lock) n. Emotional engulfment; love at first sight.Science Officer Jim Kirk is visiting Vulcan on a cultural survey when he locks eyes with a slave and suddenly he’s married.





	1. First Contact

**Author's Note:**

> You're going to hate Sarek in this, just accept it as inevitable. Also, I have not watched Discovery and have no clue if I'm writing Michael right or not.
> 
> Ka'athyra = Vulcan harp/lyre thing  
> Kolchak = flute-like tube instrument with wooden parts  
> Sa-kai = brother

Vulcan was a planet that had been discovered not too long ago on the outer reaches of the frontier. Not much was known about it; there had been contact a few times before but nothing extensive. The Enterprise was being sent to scout them out on a cultural survey to determine whether they would make a good admission to the Federation or not. 

“Alright. Everybody ready to go?” Pike asked. Jim and the two xenoanthropologists nodded. “Energize.” 

They beamed into an ambassadorial reception room. It was richly decorated with thick red tapestries and lush ornamental rugs. The tapestries went all the way up to a center point on the ceiling, creating a tent-like feeling, though they were definitely inside a building. A pitcher of water and five crystal goblets were set out on a table in the center of the room. 

A man stood just behind the table, attended to by a servant on each side—one of whom appeared to be human, to Jim’s surprise. He wore a cape with armor plates over the shoulders but no shirt. His skirt was plain beige and held a dagger belted to his waist. Sandals laced all the way up to his knees. His chest, arms, face were all covered in black warpaint, elaborate calligraphy that Jim had to assume were words, though they didn’t look like any system of writing he had ever seen before. 

“Captain Christopher, I greet thee. Live long and prosper.” He held out his hand in a strange salute. He had absolutely butchered the pronunciation of Pike’s name, and Jim had to work hard to suppress a laugh. 

Pike tried to return the gesture. “Just Pike is fine. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ambassador Sarek.” 

Sarek raised an eyebrow. “It is customary for visiting envoys to be given water following their journey. Water holds a high value in our culture. My slaves shall now provide this to you.” 

Slaves? 

The two attendants moved from Sarek’s side, one pouring water into the goblets and the other distributing them the landing party. Sarek was given a goblet also. Pike raised his slightly in toast and took a sip. Seeming pleased, Sarek mimicked the gesture, and the landing party followed suit. The water was surprisingly sweet, like it had been flavored. 

“Come, we have much to discuss.” Sarek set his goblet back on the table, and the slaves moved to take them from the guests. Jim’s eyes met the slave’s as he handed his off, and the man gasped. 

Their minds were touching, blending, tying, in a knot and intertwining. The feeling was intoxicating, a high like Jim had never known. It was a rush. It was heading down a ski slope at breakneck speed. It was the feeling you get at the top of a rollercoaster. It was a first kiss happening a second time. It was driving off the edge of a cliff at ninety miles an hour. 

The slave looked away abruptly, face tinging chartreuse. Jim’s head swam at the sudden loss of connection. 

“Master Sarek, he bonded with me,” he said. 

“That is impossible.” He paused and turned in the doorway. “I misspeak. That is extremely unlikely.” 

“And yet it has happened,” the slave said, openly staring at Jim like he was some puzzling, impossible thing. He squirmed under the intensity of the gaze. 

“What’s going on here?” Pike asked warily. 

“It appears that your officer has married my slave,” Sarek said, and Kirk’s jaw dropped. 

 _“Married?!”_  he shrieked. 

“Yes. A telepathic bond has spontaneously formed between you. Under Vulcan law, this is marriage.” 

Pike glanced between them. “Maybe we all better sit down and talk this over.” 

“As you wish.” Sarek inclined his head. He lead them out into a sitting room with furniture made of cool dark stone and dimly lit by torches. The landing party took seats uncomfortably on the rough-hewn couch. Sarek sat opposite them, and his slaves remained standing just a step behind. 

“What exactly happened? How did this bond form?” Pike asked. 

“Your officer and my slave are ni’var—two who are one. A shan’hal’lak bond has formed between them at first sight because of this. Such a thing is rare on Vulcan, and highly coveted. Few shan’hal’lak bonds have ever been recorded throughout our history, as they only form as the result of perfect mental compatibility.” 

Perfect? 

“Their minds recognized each other’s presence as that of their soulmate’s, and so sought—“ 

“Woah woah woah woah wait. Soulmates?!” Jim asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Well I don’t wanna be married. How do I undo it?” he asked. 

“Jim,” Pike said warningly. 

“The marriage is binding. Any attempt to remove or impede a shan’hal’lak bond results in instant death. If you would prefer death, that can be arranged.” 

“N-no thank you,” he said. What the fuck had he gotten himself into? 

“By law, a bonded slave becomes chattel of his free mate. I release him to thee,” Sarek said. 

Jim looked at the slave again. Really looked at him this time. The man appeared to be about his age, with deep brown eyes and a stoic demeanor. He was a bit taller and a lot skinnier, wearing the same simple garb as the other slave—a leather tunic and baggy, rustling pants with no shoes. Jet black hair was shorn close to his head, and the other slave’s hair was cropped equally short, while Sarek wore his in a loose braid all the way down his back. 

“I don’t want to own anybody,” he said. 

“If you wish, he may remain as a slave in my household. There is nothing that may be done about the bond. However, you need not make any changes in your life because of it. While difficult, it is possible for you to ignore it. You could leave without ever acknowledging that this happened.” 

And condemn his new husband to a life of slavery? He may have just met the guy and he may not want the bond but he couldn’t do that to anyone, not even a stranger. “Do I have any other options?” 

“You have two others: you may take the slave with you as your chattel and use him as you wish, or you may wed him in a traditional ceremony and set him free afterwards.” 

And again, as Jim wasn’t a fan of slavery, that only left him with one real choice. “I thought you said we were already married.” 

“You are bonded, which is marriage according to our culture. But it is our custom to commemorate bonding with a ritual that grants certain legal privileges. Typically, bonding is done during the ceremony rather than before,” he said, just a bit dryly.  

Jim laughed shallowly. “Trust me, there is nothing typical about this.” 

* * *

 

Chris sat down in a chair in the ornate guest room Jim had been given. “I just spoke with the admiralty and informed them of the situation,” he said. 

“And?” 

“And, they’re very happy about it. They’re thinking they can use this to leverage diplomatic ties. These Vulcans may be barbarians, but they are warp-capable, and from what we’ve seen so far, we don’t wanna have them as enemies.” 

“So what’s that mean?” 

“It means they’re gonna force you to keep it. The marriage. They’re thinking of it as a tie between Starfleet and the ambassador’s house. Which is very good for diplomacy, but…” 

“I’m married,” Jim said. “Oh my god, I’m actually married. As in for real, permanent,  _marriage.”_  

“I know. I’m sorry.” 

Jim stood up abruptly, carding fingers through his hair frantically. “Oh my god! I’m  _married!_  Like,  _married_  married!” 

“Now, calm down, kid—“ 

“No! Oh my god, oh my god! I can’t believe this! All I did was look at the guy and now I’m stuck with him for life?!” 

“I know it’s not ideal—“ 

“Not ideal? It’s the worst thing that could have ever happened!” 

“Jim.” 

“What?!” he shrieked. “Are you gonna tell me I’m pregnant now too?” 

Pike looked at him, and Jim took a deep breath. He sat back down. “Okay. Okay, I’m good now. What is it?” 

“Starfleet’s going to leave you here for a month for the wedding. Sarek says that’s the earliest they can do it. The Enterprise will be back in time for the ceremony and to pick you both up afterwards. Dr. McCoy has offered to stay with you to make sure, and I quote, ‘you don’t get yourself killed in the meantime.’” 

Jim nodded, still feeling jittery. That was good. Bones was good. He could count on him to keep him sane through all this craziness. 

“Alright. Guess I’ll see you in a month.” 

* * *

 

Michael lit a torch in the cellar room that served as the servants’ quarters that evening. She sat cross-legged on her tick mattress and Spock did the same. 

“So. A shan’hal’lak bond,” she said. 

“Yes,” Spock said warily. Michael was his fellow household slave and best friend, practically a sister to him. The two had their ticks set off in a corner away from the others, the two humans of the group, outcasts even among other slaves. 

Sarek had a soft spot for humans. He had at one point kept a human bedslave, which had resulted in Spock. The child of a slave is always a slave. Spock was lucky he had not been killed at birth, but then, Sarek had a soft spot for humans. 

So he was kept as a general household slave. He and Michael frequently served as Sarek’s personal attendants and did cleaning and bookkeeping otherwise. They had been trained as entertainers as well; Spock on the ka’athyra and Michael on the kolchak—a duty of honor for a slave. 

The others resented them for it, for their alienness and their favor. It had driven them closer together in solidarity. The others were going to think of them in joint anyway, and Sarek often used them as a pair too. Their friendship had been the natural conclusion of things. 

“Do you think he will free you?” Michael asked. 

“That seems to be his intent,” he said. 

She smiled, just a bit sadly. “I’m going to miss you.” 

A pang tugged at his heart. “And I you.” 

“This is a good thing. It is good that you are going to be freed. I’m happy for you.” 

‘Freed.’ As if that was what was happening. He was exchanging one master for another. He knew what the expectations were going to be. He was someone’s husband now. The husband of an important, arrogant man. He was going from being a household slave to being a bedslave. 

The man had said he had no wish to own another, but judging from his reaction, he wanted a traditional marriage in his culture. He would not tolerate a celibate spouse for the rest of his life, and if he could not rid himself of Spock, then he would surely use him. 

The door to the cellar room swung open with a bang and in walked Sybok. Several slaves sitting in small groups stopped their conversations, then resumed them just as quickly. He was a fairly regularly sight in the slaves’ quarters, despite being one of their masters. He made his way over to Spock and Michael. 

“So I heard a rumor from a kitchen slave today,” he said, plopping down on Michael’s tick, “that  _you_  got married. A shan’hal’lak bond. Everybody’s talking about it. Is it true?” 

Spock nodded. Sybok whistled. 

“Damn. Didn’t even know you were capable of bonding. So who is it? Who’s the lucky lady?” 

“A man, and he’s from Starfleet. A human,” Michael answered for him. 

Sybok’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “A shan’hal’lak bond between a human and a half-human? Oh, the clans’ll be pissed.” 

“And a slave no less,” Michael reminded him. “Sarek will no doubt face repercussions. Others are sure to be jealous.” 

“As they should be! This is amazing! I’m so happy for you, sa-kai.” Sybok slung an arm around his shoulders and ruffled his hair. Spock squirmed out of his grasp. 

“You should not be happy yet. I am bonded to a man who I know nothing about. For all you know, this will make things worse,” he said. 

“He’s opposed to slavery,” Michael said, hope glowing in her voice. 

“Really?” Sybok’s eyes sparkled. “Perhaps he will free him then.” 

“He says he intends to.” 

“This is great! I rejoice with thee, sa-kai. You know I would free you myself, were you my own.” 

“I know, brother.” Sybok was the leader of a group of anti-slavery radicals. He was lucky he had not been banished off the planet yet, for questioning the way of things so flagrantly. 

Most curiously of all, he regarded Spock as his brother. They shared the same father, Sarek. But Sybok was the son of a Vulcan princess and Spock was the son of a human bedslave, and that made all the difference. 


	2. Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trensu = master  
> Kafeh = slave
> 
> The Star Trek-y love song comes from the TOS episode The Conscience of the King, aka the Tarsus IV episode.

The bell to Sarek’s library rang early the next morning. Michael stretched and stood up. “I’ll get it.” 

She returned a few minutes later with a solemn look on her face. “He wants to talk to you,” she said, speaking directly to Spock. He scrambled off of his tick and threw on his clothes for the day and straightened his tunic, hurrying to Sarek’s chambers. 

He rapped sharply on the door and stood at attention, waiting, before Sarek gave the command for him to enter. He stood before his desk dutifully, hands clasped behind his back. It was not fitting for a slave to speak first. 

“You have bonded to the Chief Science Officer of the Starship Enterprise,” Sarek said, scrutinizing him. 

“Yes,” Spock said, uncertain. 

“This is good for diplomacy. The Federation is vast and mighty, with many resources to call on. We do not want them as our enemy,” he said. “I have spoken with their Captain Pike, and he and I are in agreement. The marriage is final. You are not permitted to die and break it. You are not permitted to ignore it. You two shall form the link that bridges our two peoples toward peace. This is vital. Do you understand, Spock?” 

“Yes, trensu.” 

“You are to attend to Officer Kirk’s every need once the marriage is complete. His  _every_  need. The success of this marriage is paramount to Vulcan politics. You will keep the human satisfied. Do you understand?” 

“Yes, trensu.” 

“Until that time, you will continue to serve as my household slave. I am making you Kirk’s personal attendant for the duration of his stay. Make no mistake, however, you are still  _my_  slave.” 

“Yes, trensu.”

“Good. Dismissed,” he said, returning to his work. Spock left quietly and went to Kirk’s guest chambers and knocked on the door. His stomach was in knots. 

Kirk answered the door in his boxers and with his hair disheveled. “Yeah?” 

“I am to be your personal attendant for the duration of your stay. Is there anything you require of me?” he asked stiffly. 

“Uhh not really? I don’t really need a personal attendant. You can go do whatever it is you normally do. Consider it a day off.” 

“Slaves do not have days off. My master has ordered that I attend you and I will be punished if I do not.” 

“Oh,” Kirk rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, come on in, I guess.” He stepped out of the way to allow Spock entry into his chambers. His bedchambers. Spock closed his eyes for just a second to steel himself. 

“Hey, I just realized, I don’t know your name. We’re married and I don’t know your name,” he said. “I’m James Tiberius Kirk. My friends call me Jim. And you are?” 

“I am Spock, kafeh t’Sarek, of the clan of S’chn T’gai.” He bowed his head slightly. 

Jim grinned. “Well it’s nice to meet you, Spock, kafeh t’Sarek, of the clan of S’chn T’gai. It okay if I just call you Spock?” 

“You may call me whatever you wish,” he said. 

Jim laughed, a free, tinkling sound. “Well alright then. Since we’re gonna be married, we should probably get to know each other. So. Tell me about yourself.” 

“There is not much to tell. The personal matters of a slave are of no interest.” 

“Try me anyway.” 

Spock made a motion that could almost be interpreted as a shrug. “I am a slave of the House of Sarek. I serve as one of his personal attendants and perform basic household duties such as cleaning and clerical matters for him. I have been trained as a musician on the ka’athyra.” 

“You’re a musician?” Kirk asked, eyes lighting up. “Can you play something for me?” 

“If you wish.” Spock left, intending to go fetch his ka’athyra and return, but strangely Kirk chose to follow him. Spock led him to the back corner or the house where no guests ever went and down the narrow, unlit stairway. 

The servant’s quarters were a walled off section of the cellar, with a low-hanging ceiling and a dingy, damp feel to the air. It was completely empty of all people by this time of day. The floor was hard-pressed and dirt and littered with tick mattresses—no more than straw sewn loosely together and covered with fabric. Torches were mounted on the walls here and there, but didn’t provide quite enough light to illuminate the rats that were chittering around. 

“What is this place?” Kirk asked. It was so unlike the rest of the house. 

“This is the servants’ quarters,” Spock said. He walked over to his cot and picked up the bag containing his belongings, pulling out the ka’athyra. 

“You live here?” Kirk asked, still looking around. 

“Yes,” Spock answered. His mate was certainly… curious. In both senses of the word. He sat down on his tick, positioning the instrument. “What would you like me to play for you?” 

Jim shook his head, bringing himself back to reality. They were still doing this, apparently, as if this were normal. “Uhh… do you know  _Beyond Antares_?” 

Why did he have to say  _that_  one? 

Spock didn’t know  _Beyond Antares_ , but was confident he could pick it up if Kirk hummed the melody a few times, which he did. And then Spock was playing and it was wrong without words but Kirk’s voice seemed too loud in the stillness of the room, so then he was almost whispering. 

 

 _“The skies are green and glowing_  

 _Where my heart is_  

 _Where the scented lunar flower’s growing_  

 _Somewhere beyond the stars_  

 _Beyond Antares_   

 

 _“I’ll be back, though it takes forever_  

 _Forever is just a day_  

 _Forever is just another journey_  

 _Tomorrow is a stop along the way_  

 _And let the years go fading_  

 

 _“_ _Where my heart is_  

 _Where my heart is_  

 _Where my love eternal is waiting_  

 _Somewhere beyond the stars_  

 _Beyond Antares_ _.”_  

 

He cleared his throat in the sudden quiet of the room. “You’re—you’re a really good player.” 

“Thank you,” he said. And now there was true silence. 

“So,” he shifted. “I get that you’re a slave and you play the electric harp—“ 

“Ka’athyra.” 

“Ka’athyra, right—but what else? What’s your family like? Do you even have a family? Do you sleep on the right side of the bed or the left? What’s your favorite color? Your favorite food?” 

Spock hesitated. “Which question do you want me to answer first?” 

Kirk grinned. “The family one.” 

“My mother was a human slave. She died when I was five, at which point she was no longer able to protect me and I was put to work doing light chores around the household.” 

“So you were born into slavery then? You don’t have some family somewhere, mourning the loss of their abducted child?” 

“I do not.” 

“That’s good. I guess,” he frowned. “Hey, this isn’t fair to you. I’m learning all this stuff about you, but you aren’t learning anything about me. How about we make it a game, I ask one question, you ask one question. Sound alright?” 

Spock nodded. 

“Great. You’ve answered three questions, so now you get to ask three.” Kirk perched forward expectantly. Spock was again floored by the consideration shown him by his soon-to-be master. He was treating him almost as an equal. 

“Why did you decide to enlist in Starfleet?” he asked. 

“Okay, first of all, I didn’t enlist—I’m a commissioned officer, I went through the Academy,” he said. 

“My sincerest apologies,” Spock said. 

“Nah, it’s no big deal, lots of people make that mistake,” he said. “And in answer to your question, I wanted to see the stars. To be among them. To see everything that’s out there in the great big unknown. Haven’t you ever wanted to do that? To get out there and explore, see something no one else ever has before?” 

Spock ducked his head. “Such thoughts are foolish.” He jerked up, stricken. “I mean—“ 

“No, no, it’s okay, I get it,” Kirk said. And he did. And he didn’t like it. “Hey, I guess that was another question, so you’re back up to three.” 

“What is your family like?” he asked, borrowing one of Kirk’s earlier questions. 

“My family? Oh, well they’re—I don’t know. They’re just my family. I’ve got a mom, a dad, and an older brother named Sam. He’s a biologist. Both my parents are in Starfleet. My dad was a big inspiration to me. He sort of encouraged me to join Starfleet, y’know, follow in his footsteps,” he said. “Next question.” 

“I confess I am uncertain as to what to ask.” 

“That’s fine. How about I just talk and you just listen?” he suggested. Spock nodded his agreement. “Alright. I grew up in Iowa, on Earth. It’s a beautiful place, all golden fields and open skies. We lived in a small town called Riverside. Not much to do there, but it had a shipyard, so I actually got to see the Enterprise being built. Had no idea I’d be her Chief Science Officer one day. 

“I was always interested in science. I was a bit of a nerd as kid. Still am, I guess. I like reading books. The old-style paper ones, when I can find ‘em, but to be honest I read anything I can get my hands on. I’ve always loved learning, and I’m not picky about what.” He chuckled slightly. He rested his head on one hand, looking up at Spock with big baleful eyes. His mouth went dry. “That enough to earn me another question yet?” 

“Indeed.” 

“Great.” He smiled wide. He did that a lot, Spock noticed. “So you told me about your mom, but what about your dad? He another slave? I mean—you don’t have to answer that if it’s—“ 

“It is no trouble. My father is Sarek,” he said. 

“What? But isn’t he your—the guy who’s—Your own father is keeping you as a slave?” 

“Yes, zhel-lan.” 

“Zhel-lan?” 

“Commander.” 

Kirk shook his head, holding up a hand. “Okay, back up. No, I didn’t mean it literally, Jesus, Spock. Your own dad enslaved you?” 

“Yes, zhel-lan.” 

“You don’t need to call me that. How’d that happen?” 

“My mother was a captured human, bought from the Orions. She was Master Sarek’s bedslave. She became pregnant. I inherited her servitude, as is the law.” 

Kirk’s face darkened. “Is there any way Sarek could have freed you? You’re his son.” 

“He does not regard me as such. To free me would damage his reputation among the clans considerably. He was already being overly generous by allowing me to be carried to term and promising not to sell me, which he only did as a courtesy to my mother. He was quite lenient with her.” 

If possible, his expression darkened even further at hearing Spock  _excuse_  this. He had known his new husband was in a shitty situation, but he had no idea it was  _this_  shitty. 

He wasn’t going to stand for this. A month to wait for Spock’s freedom was too damn long. He stood and strode to the door, Spock following at his heels. 

“If you are going to speak with Master Sarek, I must inform you—“ 

“Please tell me you aren’t going to make more excuses for him.” 

“I am treated more favorably than any other slave in this house. In this city.” 

Kirk huffed out air in disgust. He kept walking. 

He marched up the stairs and through the winding corridors to Sarek’s study. He banged his fist against the door. Spock hovered a half-step behind him. 

Sarek threw the door open, face stormy, then he saw that it was Kirk and quickly covered. “Commander Kirk. I had been meaning to speak with you.” 

“Good, because I have something I wanna say to you too,” he said, pushing his way into the room. Spock surreptitiously made himself scarce, and Sarek closed the door, returning to his desk. “What is the matter that troubles you?” 

 _“You enslaved your own son,”_  he hissed out. 

“I did not ‘enslave’ him. He was born into it. There was nothing that could be done.” 

“Nothing that—You could free him!” 

“That is not the way of things.” 

“So?!” 

“To do so would upset the clans. I will not provoke a territory war for the sake of one man,” he said. “I am a prominent man in my clan, Commander. My actions create ripples. If I were to free a slave out of pure sentiment, it would be taken as a political statement and it would cause widespread unrest.” 

“I get it. You don’t free your son because it would make the other super-rich Vulcans a little whiny.” 

Sarek eyed him. “You trivialize war.” 

“And you justify slavery because maintaining the status quo is easier than doing something about it.” He returned the glare with equal force. 

Sarek rose. “I will not be spoken to in such a manner.” His voice was thunderous. 

“Yeah? Well, I’m just stating facts, buddy, so if that makes you uncomfortable, then maybe you should do something to change those facts.” He jabbed a finger against Sarek’s chest. 

“My actions are my own to dictate. If you wish Spock to be free, then you may free him yourself when he is yours at the end of the month. The peace between the clans is new and unstable. Vulcans are a warrior people, Zhel-lan Kirk, a warrior people who keep to themselves. That has only one possible outcome. I will not risk the peace of the clans because of one man’s judgment.” 

Jim seethed, but there was nothing he could. Nothing but marry Spock, but he couldn’t do that yet and it sucked. He hated this. 

“Now, about the matter I wished to discuss with you,” Sarek said, moving on. “There is a ritual you must complete before the wedding can take place. All Vulcan youth complete it at age seven; it should be fairly easy for you. It is called the kahs-wan.” 

“What is it?” he asked numbly. 

“You will be sent out into the desert without any food, water, or weapons. If you survive one week, only then will you be suitable for marriage.” 

 _“What?!”_  

“You have three days to prepare.” 


	3. Train Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise the next chapter will be more interesting than this one, it was just a necessary transition.
> 
> The Vulcan words and info come from the Vulcan Language Dictionary

“Bones you aren’t gonna believe this,” he said, bursting into the doctor’s slightly-less-nice guest chambers. Spock followed two steps behind.

“Thanks for knocking,” he griped.

“That’s not important right now, Bones. The Vulcans are going to kill me!”

“What?” He scrambled to his feet, now fully alert. “You better fucking be exaggerating, kid. Do we need to make a run for it?”

“James has not been sentenced to death. His life is in no immediate danger,” Spock said. He knew he was forbidden to speak, but he felt this was an extenuating circumstance. It was important that that be stated.

Bones turned back to Jim, glaring now, arms crossed.

“Bones,” Jim said somberly. “They’re sending me into the desert for a  _week.”_

“Oh, for chrissakes, you had me thinking—“

“With no supplies! I’m serious, Bones, I’m gonna die.”

“You’ll be fine, you wuss.”

“I… No, you—It’s not… that I think the desert’s going to kill me. It’s the going a week without food part that I’m worried about,” he ground out slowly, as if each word cost him greatly.

Bones’ eyes softened. “Can we have some privacy here?” He turned to Spock, who nodded and left the room to go stand outside the door, at the ready. Bones lowered his voice before continuing.

“Tell me exactly they said to you and we’ll see if there’s any way we can get an exception made or get you out of it somehow.”

“Sarek said that it’s something all Vulcans have to do before they’re allowed to get married. Apparently most do it as little kids. They send me out into the desert for a week without any food, water, or equipment, and if I survive, then we have the wedding.”

“Okay. Well that’s good news. It sounds like it’s optional,” he said. “You don’t have to do this. You skip the weird Vulcan death ritual, you skip the wedding, I send a subspace message to Pike and we hop back on the Enterprise and leave this ball o’ dirt behind us for good.”

“I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because of Spock.”

“Spock?”

“The slave. My husband,” he said glumly. “I can’t just abandon him. He probably wants off this planet just as bad as we do.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “You’re assuming. You’re assuming he hates his homeworld. You’ve got a damn savior complex, kid, and for all you know you’re trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

“He’s a slave, Bones. Nobody wants to be a slave. His own dad enslaved him!”

“He has family here?” Jim’s mouth snapped shut.

“Yeah, but not  _good_  family. It’s just his evil dad, it sounds like.”

“I don’t want you re-traumatizing yourself over a misunderstanding. And I know this sounds harsh, but god dammit Jim, this man’s a stranger. Are you sure he’s worth all this?”

And that struck every bad chord Jim had, reminding him painfully of when Kodos had decided some people were worth more than others, when half the colony had been fucking slaughtered so that the others wouldn’t have to suffer as much.

He was valuing his quality of life over Spock’s. That was essentially what he was saying here. That he was worth more.

“You know what, forget I said anything. It’s just for one week. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. I’ll be fine.”

“Jim—“

“I can handle it.”

“You might not have to! Have you even asked the guy if this is what he wants?”

“…no.”

“Jim.” Condescending judgment.

He sighed. “Fine, I’ll ask him. For all the good it’ll do. He’s just gonna say the same thing I did. Nobody  _wants_ to be a slave.”

He flung the door open and nearly collided with Spock. “Oh. There you are. Hey, I have a question for you. Do you actually  _want_  to marry me?”

Spock’s sensitive hearing had of course picked up the entire previous conversation. While in his culture, no one cared what a slave knew any more than they cared what a domestic animal overheard, he could tell it was different for the Terrans and regretted the accidental intrusion. It wasn’t hard to come to the conclusion that his bondmate had starved before. That it had been traumatic and that the kahs-wan would force him to relive it. That it would put him through further trauma, and that the man was good and selfless enough to martyr himself for a complete stranger.

Spock could not allow that.

“My own desires are irrelevant. I am to be your slave; my duty is to serve yours.”

Jim’s face contorted into an expression that made the word ‘frown’ seem inadequate. “You aren’t going to be my slave. Why would you think you were going to be my slave?”

“Should you choose to wed me, that is what I would become following the ceremony.”

“I would free you. I thought I’d made that pretty clear.”

Spock would not allow himself to fully believe that. It was one thing to speak of such a matter, it was another to actually go through with it. “Nevertheless, in a Vulcan marriage, the being of lesser status becomes legal chattel of their mate.”

“Yeah? Well a human marriage is a partnership. Between equals. If we got married—I don’t care what the law says—that’s how it would go.”

And that was a fanciful, romantic notion that had no grounding in reality. Spock was certain Terran marriages did not actually live up to this ideal. There is always one who is less. There is always one who dictates and one whose actions are dictated. One always has more advantages or disadvantages than another. True equality does not exist between any two individuals in the universe. It was impossible to believe that Terrans found it in their every bonding.

He found empty promises to be insulting.

“I do not require such platitudes, Zhel-lan. You need not waste your breath telling hopeful tales to a slave.”

“It isn’t a hopeful tale, it’s the truth. If we got married, Spock, you would be my equal.”

Spock said nothing, as it would be above his place to call a guest in his master’s house a liar.

“Hey,” McCoy called from inside the room, quickly joining them. “If the desert death ritual is something all Vulcans have to do, then doesn’t that mean you’ve done it before?”

“Indeed,” he said.

Jim’s eyes lit up. “Bones, you’re brilliant!” He grabbed Spock’s hands excitedly, and Spock forced himself not to flinch or pull away. “You can train me! Teach me what plants are edible, where to find water in the desert, when and where to sleep, all that sort of stuff. That is, if you would, of course. Please.”

Spock looked at him curiously. “I will do whatever you wish of me.”

He dropped his hands. “Yeah, but are you doing it because you want to help or because you think you have to?”

“You want his help or not?” McCoy muttered.

“As I have previously stated, my own desires are irrelevant. I am your attendant slave at least for the time being, as per my master’s orders. I am here solely to serve.”

“Spock, you’re allowed to say no. You can always say no to me, you get that, right?”

“You desire me to refuse you requests?”

“Well, I don’t want you to just automatically say yes to everything I ask. If you don’t wanna do something, then you don’t have to. It’s like I said. You’re my partner, not my slave.”

That was factually untrue, but Spock let the human believe what he wanted. If his bondmate wanted to think them equals, then that was his prerogative. It appeared to be an important aspect of marriage within his culture.

“I can feel you doubting me,” Jim said.

“I apologize.”

Jim sighed. “That’s completely missing the point, but it’s okay, you’ll get there. So. Do you  _want_  to help me?”

“I—Yes, I believe so.”

* * *

 

“What are the main predators to beware of in the desert?” Spock quizzed.

“Le-matyas. Nor-sehlats. Mor’gril.”

“Describe them.”

“Le-matyas are these big hunting cats with green and white stripes in their fur and I’m supposed to watch out for their claws because they’re poisonous. Nor-sehlats are like the cousins of your giant pet bear things. If I see them, I need to get up high somewhere fast because they can’t climb. Mor-gril are psychic wolves that hunt in packs and I better just hope and pray I don’t encounter any of them.”

“The proper term is psionic, and I believe they bear closer resemblance to the Terran wolverine than an actual wolf.”

“Same difference. They’ll still kill me. Next question.”

“Which animals should you not attempt to capture and eat due to their poisonous nature?”

“K’karees and shatarrs.”

“Describe.”

“K’karee are bluish-gray snakes and shatarrs are these lizard things that live under rocks.”

“Where can you find a sufficient source of salt in order to prevent dehydration?”

“Alem-vedik bushes. They’re spiky and brittle, easy to spot.”

“What are some edible plants you are likely to find?”

“Chakh. Fori. G’teth, hirat, and tono’pak berries. Kasa. Qir-lal roots. Yon-savas.”

“What poisonous plants should you beware of?”

“Huhsh-vedik, which means cough weed and doesn’t wear off for twelve hours once ingested.”

“What should you do should you become injured?”

“Rub salt in the wound to treat it. Find some wun-kas-slakh vines to wrap it with and kusut-vedik for the pain. Find a cave so the birds won’t smell the blood.”

“How should you defend yourself?”

“The second I get out there, I need to cross the Plains of Blood and head straight to the Forge, where I can take shelter in the mountains. I need to find an empty cave and build a fire at its entrance and start laying down traps and making weapons.”

“When should you sleep?”

“In the middle of the day, when the sun’s at its highest and everything else is sleeping too.”

“What should you drink?”

“Aloe from inside of cacti.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I mentioned that only as a secondary option.”

“Well, I didn’t like the primary option.”

“It is not wise to sacrifice your life over squeamishness—“

“Spock, I don’t care what you say, if there’s a chance I can get by on just aloe, then I’m gonna try it.”

“Drinking the blood of your kills was the way of the ancients and is perfectly sa—“

“I am not doing that.”

“Very well. Have you memorized the map the master issued you?”

“Yep. I converted your measurements into kilometers and factored in the average human walking speed, and I think I should reach the Forge in less than two days. Anything else?”

“I believe that is it.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” he said. “You have learned all that I can teach you within our limited time. You are now as prepared for the kahs-wan as you can be.”


	4. Kahs-wan, Part 1

Jim was dressed by servants in traditional Vulcan warrior’s garb and brought to a grand, open-air temple. The room was lit by torches on every column, even though it was still daytime and there was no ceiling. The room’s edges were ringed with silent, stoic Vulcans in either similar warrior’s clothes or long, somber robes. All of Sarek’s house was there, as were a great deal of slaves and representatives from every house in his clan.

Jim’s sandals seemed to echo loudly across the marble floor. He was attended by Spock and the human slave from earlier, each at his side, a half step behind—but somehow their footsteps were silent as a cat’s.

The slaves marched him through the center of the temple to a throne at the back where an elderly woman sat wearing robes of light, flowy fabric. The High Priestess. He stood before her with arms to the sides as instructed, presenting himself.

Another slave brought the priestess a gourd and a strange-looking paintbrush. She pulled a dagger out from the folds of her robe and sliced the gourd in half lengthwise, holding what remained on its side so as not to spill the contents. She dipped the paintbrush into the oily fluid and approached Jim.

She began chanting loudly in Vulcan as the paintbrush touched his face. Designs swirled over his skin, the oil cool and tickly, but he kept perfectly still, even when she drew slashes down his eyelids. She painted long lines down his upper arms, writing ‘HONOR’ on one and ‘COURAGE’ on the other in beautiful musical calligraphy. Finally, she added one last line down the center of his chest and wrote on it S’chn T’gai.

He had been made an honorary member of Sarek’s clan.

* * *

 

The hovercar ride seemed to last for hours before it came to a stop.

“We are here,” the driver said.

“Where’s ‘here’?” Jim asked.

“The center of the Plains of Blood,” she said. “This is where you exit.”

“Wait,” Bones said, digging into his medbag. He was the only other person in the car. He had insisted on being allowed to ride along to see Jim off.

He pulled out a hypo and presented it as if it held the gift of life itself. “A tri-ox compound. For the road,” he said. “I know it won’t last, and it’s almost sundown anyway, but…“

Jim nodded. He felt the pinch of the needle entering his neck and the flow of warmth as Bones pressed the plunger down. He could feel the effects immediately. He was more energized, buzzed, high on strength and power he didn’t know he had. He felt like he could run for miles. Everything around him was focused in with crystalline sharpness and clarity. He was  _invincible._

The driver opened the door to the hovercar impatiently and shoved Jim out. He fell on his face in the sand. “Wait—!”

But the car was already speeding away, a speck of silver skimming over the dunes.

Jim huffed and climbed to his feet, brushing the sand off himself. He looked around. The hovercar had come from the east, and the Forge would be west by northwest from here. He had 119.35 miles to cross—he didn’t want to do it going the wrong direction.

He turned in the direction of the setting sun and adjusted his path 3.4 degrees north from it.

The average comfortable human walking speed is 3.1 miles per hour. The Vulcan day is approximately thirty hours long. Provided that Jim takes a half hour break once every four hours and uses six hours for sleep, that means he has twenty-one hours of walking the first day alone and will cover 65.1 miles. It won’t take the full second day to cover the rest of the journey, so tomorrow should be a little bit easier.

In theory.

Jim started out the trek with a skip in his step, walking pretty quickly. He was determined to make the most of his time. The sooner he got to the Forge, the better. The Forge was safety. The Forge was shelter and food and, if he was lucky, maybe even water.

Maybe he would find an oasis along the way and set up camp there instead. He would love to be able to take a bath right about now. He was already starting to sweat, and the oil on his skin felt itchy and gross. He got that it was a sacred Vulcan ritual and a huge honor and all that good stuff, but still. He didn’t want to get really weird tan lines from it.

He had slowed down to a more moderate pace about fifteen minutes in. The sun dipped below the horizon and the air began to cool. The dusk breeze felt heavenly on his skin. He didn’t know why he had been so worried about this. The kahs-wan was a piece of cake.

Then night fell and the tri-ox wore off, taking his artificially-induced happy with it.

The desert temperature dropped quickly and soon plunged below freezing. The pleasant breeze turned into a bitter, biting wind that blew sand in his eyes. The night was black as pitch without any moon and with only starlight to go by. There was half the desert’s worth of sand and pebbles in his shoes, but he knew if he took them off to empty them out, they would just fill back up again in seconds. Plus the lacings would take at least five minutes to mess with. He knew sandals were probably very practical for a warrior who needed to be light on his feet, but man, what he wouldn’t give for a good old pair of cowboy boots right about then.

The night wore on, and Jim’s progress slowed. His toes and fingers went numb fast, quickly followed by the tip of his nose, which wouldn’t stop running and the wind really wasn’t helping.

The desert came to life at night, all of its creatures coming out of their hiding places now that the heat of the day had passed. The only animals Jim had truly seen during the day were birds and bugs, both of which were gone now. They had been replaced with lizards and snakes and small burrowing creatures and herds of something passing by in the distance. The screeching caws of lanka-gars as they swooped down on prey.

He saw a giant, toothless slug-thing swallow a rock whole and digest it in seconds. He gave that creature a wide berth. Spock hadn’t mentioned them.

Walking for twenty one hours straight was a sound strategy in theory but in practice it had to be around 0400 Federation time and Jim hadn’t slept in almost a full day and he was dead on his feet, barely moving. It was a struggle even to keep his eyes open, much less to put one foot in front of the other. There was no way he was going to be able to hold out until noon. But he couldn’t go to sleep at night—the predators would be on him in seconds. He had to keep going until at least sunrise. Then everything would go back to sleep and he could finally relax.

He stopped taking breaks. He wouldn’t be able to get going again if he sat down, and there was too much of a risk of him falling asleep. Besides, he was already falling behind anyway. May as well make up for the lost time.

It was the middle of winter on Vulcan. Jim had been extremely grateful when he first learned that. The desert would be at its coldest. He had lucked into the easiest time of year possible to do this. And that also meant there would be equal hours of darkness as there was light, which was great. Less sunburn for him. It would be easier to walk at night than during the day, right? And he wanted to spend as little time in the sun as possible.

Jim would kill for just five minutes of warm sunlight right about then.

He had underestimated just how cold the desert got at night. He deeply regretted his skimpy warrior’s clothes right about now. At least he had the cape, though, and that kept the sun off during the day and he had it wrapped around himself like a blanket in the night.

This was one of the dumbest things he has ever willingly agreed to. It was worse than his Starfleet Academy wilderness survival sims. At least then he had known that someone was watching and they wouldn’t actually let him die. Plus it had been on home turf. He knew the terrain, he knew the wildlife, he knew what to expect of the climate and how to deal with it.

This, though? This just sucked, on like eight different levels.

At last, the sun started rising and the air warming up. The wildlife slithered and crawled back under rocks and into tunnels. Birds took to the air and started up their singing. Insects buzzed around him annoyingly, but hey, he’d rather be bothered by insects than by le-matya.

* * *

 

He woke up without being aware of having gone to sleep.

There was a huge sandworm crawling on his chest. It turned its ring-mouthed face to look at him, needle teeth glinting.

He shrieked and jumped into the air, frantically brushing it off of him. The creature writhed in the air as it fell and quickly scuttled away on dozens of sharp little legs.

A horrible idea came to him.

“Oh, I’m gonna regret this,” he groaned. Hurriedly, before he could think about it, he slammed down his foot on the sandworm’s head. The thing burst open like a waterballoon, spilling guts and juice everywhere.

Juice.

“Gross gross gross gross gross,” he said, and he didn’t think about it and he slurped up the sandworm’s guts because it had been hours and hours and hours since he last drank anything and he was hungry too and oh it was gross.

He would never tell Spock about this,  _ever._

The day dragged on so much slower than the one before. Hotter, too. He had started out crossing the desert on a breezy winter evening, but now the sun was out and climbing higher and higher, baking the air like the atmosphere was made of glass.

If this was winter, then Jim  _never_  wanted to see summer.

* * *

 

There were a few animals that were awake during the day.

Jim hadn’t known that.

So he was fairly surprised when he found himself surrounded by reddish furry little things that seemed to pop right out of the desert and looked like a cross between a sloth and a miniature bear.

He was more surprised when they started circling and growling menacingly.

“Okay. Okay. Now you’re a bunch of little dog things, and I figure the worst you guys can do is bite my ankles, but it looks like you have sharp teeth, so how about we go our separate ways so that I don’t have to kick you guys or something?” he said diplomatically. Because sharp teeth or no, he knew he could take these little guys.

But then suddenly, he was moving very… slowly. And then not moving at all, frozen in place. He found that he didn’t want to move. He wanted to stay exactly as he was: relaxed, exposed, waiting. Nothing in the galaxy sounded like a good enough reason to move. Staying right there just felt  _right._

It occurred to him that maybe wolverines weren’t just tiny wolves. That maybe they were a completely different animal.

That these were mor-gril.

A fatal mistake.

They lunged.


	5. Kahs-wan, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eshak = a Vulcan method of killing someone using only your mind

The mor-gril flew at him, knocking him to the ground in a pile of red fur and fangs. He fell back, pliant, not putting up a fight, not even raising an arm to defend himself. Teeth sunk into his thigh and  _tore,_  ripping out flesh painfully. A scream of agony tore through him.

The beasts seemed to thrive on the sound. Jaws clamped down on his shoulder, teeth went for his throat, but he dodged it, just barely.

He dodged it.

They were distracted. The bloodlust must be getting to their heads and weakening their control.

Jim screamed louder now, letting the pain rake through him, hoping they could sense it telepathically. He concentrated on the blood gushing from his wounds, red and hot and burning in the sand, and he lost himself in the sensation, giving himself completely over to it, letting the pain swallow him whole.

The mor-gril flew into a frenzy, and he could brace himself now, he could push back and dodge. Jaws snapped on nothing, pulled out tufts of hair, ripped up clothing. Claws shredded and lacerated his skin into flayed strips. He punched one straight in the nose and sent it off howling.

He used the momentum to swing back and elbow another, shoving it away. He landed in two solid kicks and pushed the pack back a bit. He clamored to his feet, ready to sprint away, and then froze.

The pack reasserted its control.

He could close his eyes at least, so he wouldn’t have to see when—

Nothing happened.

The sound of howling and wounded whimpering. He opened his eyes.

And there was Spock, shining in the sun like a true Vulcan warrior, fighting the mor-gril off with a stick.

Not just a stick, Jim realized. For as much of a physical battle was taking place, he suspected an even greater mental one was raging right before his eyes. The combatants seemed to move back and flinch without being touched at times, and Jim could recognize an attack when he saw it, even without any physical blows.

Thinking fast, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the pack leader’s head. The animal tore his attention off of Spock and back to Jim, along with a few other members of the pack.

Perfect.

He threw out a roundhouse kick that knocked one pack member into another, disorienting them both. Another mor-gril lunged at him, sinking teeth into the already open wound in his leg, and Jim howled.

The mor-gril moved in for the kill and then keeled over dead on the spot, without even being touched.

Eshak.

Spock swung his stick around, using it alternatingly as a shield and as a spear. Its tip was sharpened and coated with poison, and he plunged it into one of the beasts’ hides, making the creature shriek.

He caught the pack leader across the face on the swing out and the animal used the moment of daze to take stock of his pack. Their mental cries were clear in his mind. They were losing.

There was a reason mor-gril did not attack Vulcan villages.

He gave a wordless command through their mental web and trotted off. The pack drew back, retreated, tails between their legs and nursing wounds.

Jim collapsed into the sand, breathing heavy. Spock rushed to kneel at his side.

“Zhel-lan, where are your injuries?”

“My leg,” he gasped. “They got my leg real bad.”

There was too much blood to inspect the injury. Red blood, darker when it came from deeper within. It smelled sickeningly of iron. Spock tore Jim’s pant leg off above the injury and tried to mop up some of the blood with the cape. He tore a strip off the discarded fabric of the pant leg and tied it into a tourniquet. The blood flow slowed, mercifully.

But not enough.

Spock looked at him uncertainly. “The wound needs to be cauterized.”

“Do it,” Jim said, head lolling back and eyes closed. He was out of it. He was just barely aware enough to realize that that was a very bad thing.

Spock gathered thornbrush and dead cactus and lit a small fire. He placed rocks in it that were already almost too hot to touch from the desert sun. He mopped up more blood to clear the wound. The bottom half of Jim’s cape was drenched in it now.

He stoked the fire until it grew larger, hotter. And then he used two sticks to pull out rocks and place them on Jim’s open wound and make the man scream in pain loud enough to echo across the whole of the desert and he kept doing that until the wound was sealed in ugly, seared-scarred flesh, pulsing red but now finally closed.

Jim had passed out halfway through. Spock was relieved.

* * *

 

Jim awoke blearily in a totally different location. It was just before sunset. Spock was still there, which still didn’t make sense, and he was cooking things over the fire in front of him.

“Wha?” Jim asked intelligently.

Spock blinked in surprise and handed him some cooked cactus meat/bark/whatever. It was just slightly crispy, and still juicy inside. Jim ate it gratefully. It did not taste good.

“When you are finished, most of the cactus remains standing and has aloe in it to drink if you wish.”

“What about you?”

“I have already drank all that I need.”

He nodded. Good. He thought it was important to make sure Spock’s needs were taken care of, because God knew nobody else would.

“Slow hunting day, I take it. Not that I’m complaining,” he added quickly.

“I did not wish to spare the time. I thought it would be more beneficial to keep moving and eat what was readily available. If I was mistaken, in the future, I can—“

“No, no, Spock, that’s not what I meant. Cactus is fine. I was just trying to make conversation,” he said. A thought occurred to him. “Wait, did you carry me all this way?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I believe I did. The blood of the battle drew a significant number of birds to the site. It became increasingly difficult to keep them away as you slept.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well I’m sorry.”

Spock tilted his head.

“For burdening you,” Jim explained.

“You need not apologize for having needs.”

He raised an eyebrow, because that was fucking rich, coming from him, but okay, sure. “Still. You didn’t have to do that. So thanks.”

“Thanks are unnecessary, as I am your slave and it is my duty to—“

“Y’know, on Earth, when someone says thank you, the typical response is just to accept it and say you’re welcome,” he said, because he didn’t feel like having the whole you’re-my-equal debate again.

“You’re welcome,” Spock said automatically. The words sounded strange coming from his mouth, and he looked a bit surprised—at himself, at Jim, at the situation, Jim didn’t know—but it made him smile a little regardless.

* * *

 

Jim didn’t remember falling asleep again but he was woken up by being thrown to the ground.

It was night. Moonless. Dark. Cold. Windy.

Spock was on the ground beside him, huddling, shaking, in a heap, and Jim realized that he hadn’t been thrown, he had fallen. Fallen from where he was slung over Spock’s shoulders when the slave had passed out carrying him.

“Spock!” He jumped up, then yelped and winced as pain shot through his leg like fire. He crawled forward pathetically on his elbows.

Spock was shivering violently, his skin cold to the touch. Jim shrugged off his cape and wrapped him up in it. He ran his hands up and down the man’s arms, hoping to coax out some friction.

It wasn’t going to be enough. He was still shaking.

He scrambled to find tinder and stones to light a fire by. He eeked out sparks, then blew on them furiously, hoping and praying the scrub brush would catch.

It did. He let out a sigh he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Slowly, painfully, ignoring the pains that arced through him, he maneuvered Spock to be curled around the fire as close as he dared and then collapsed onto his back beside him, panting.

God. He had barely moved three feet. It shouldn’t be this hard. He shouldn’t be this exhausted.

He finally looked down at the mangled mess that was his right leg. He hadn’t had the chance to really inspect the damage before, but now he did. The mor-gril hadn’t just torn up his skin, oh no, they also ripped out a huge chunk of muscle too. The wound covered what used to be the meatiest part of the back of his leg, a section that stretched from just below his knee to only a few inches above his Achilles’ tendon. The fat and muscle that used to belong there was gone, leaving a thin, misshapen mess in its place. The skin was red and tender, covered with uneven ripples of scar tissue. He could see clearly the places where Spock’s heated rocks had rested for just a millisecond too long, leaving burn scars that had no feeling in them.

The bite on his shoulder was a flesh wound, at least, a simple pattern of puncture marks with almost no drag. It had been a clean bite. Spock had bandaged it at some point, using the remains of the pant fabric.

He was covered in scratches and claw marks all over. No doubt the cuts were dirty and at least some of them would get infected. They would need to be treated by a medical professional once they returned; hopefully they could remove the scars that were going to form.

Was it vain to be glad that none of them were on his face?

Bones was going to be so pissed off at him. He specifically told him not to get attacked by wild dogs and everything.

A particularly violent shiver wracked through Spock’s body and Jim frowned. He was still cold. If only it wasn’t so damn windy out. He was curled up facing the fire, but that still left his back exposed to the chill of the desert night.

Jim hesitated.

It was for survival. A small trespass of personal space could be forgiven.

He scooted forward and pressed himself up against the other man, wrapping an arm around him and tucking his chin into the curve of his neck. Spock melted into the touch, curling around to face Jim in his sleep and burying his face in his chest. Spock’s hands were ice against him, and Jim hugged him closer, sharing as much body heat as he could.

And then—a deep rumbling  _purr_  came from the center of Spock’s chest, vibrating against him. Jim couldn’t help it, he smiled and placed a kiss on the top of his head.

* * *

 

Spock awoke very thoroughly tangled up in Jim’s limbs and cape, next to the embers of a dying fire.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” Jim said, and Spock became fully cognizant of the situation. His first instinct was to flinch away and break all contact, but he could feel through the bond that Jim was enjoying this, that that would be a mistake.

He would not displease his master. He stayed where he was.

“You saved my life back there. I’d like to know how you did it,” Jim said. “How did you find me here?”

Spock hesitated. “I stole one of Sarek’s tracking devices. It was automatically programmed to track all chips owned by the household.”

Before he had left, the Vulcans had implanted a tracking chip in the back of Jim’s neck. Apparently in the past there had been a big problem with kids going into the desert and their bodies never being recovered at the end of the kahs-wan, but now they had the technology to prevent that from happening. And that circumvented the possibility of him getting perpetually lost in the desert, unable to find his way back. They would simply lock onto his location and beam him back to Sarek’s house at the end of the week.

“Why’d you come in the first place?” Jim asked.

“I estimated only a 26.87% chance of your survival unassisted. I apologize if I overstepped any boun—“

“Spock. I owe you my  _life._  I’m definitely not mad at you,” he said. “So Sarek didn’t send you, then?”

He shook his head. “Master Sarek does not know I am here. Michael is covering my absence for me in the hopes that he does not notice the loss and report me to the authorities as a runaway slave. I—I ask for your discretion in this matter.”

“I’m not gonna rat you out, don’t worry,” Jim smiled, hoping it was reassuring.

* * *

 

They made it to the Forge by midday, thankfully. Jim couldn't walk but refused to let Spock carry him any further, and ended up very slowly hobbling along while leaning heavily on Spock. His right leg was entirely useless. He was just dragging it along, a dead weight.

They found a cave and built something of a shelter out of it, closing up most of the entrance with stones except for a small sliver just big enough to slip through. They built a fire maybe a foot back from the entrance. The cave was cool during the day and warm at night, never varying more than twenty degrees. It was a blessing.

Jim was practically bed-bound without a bed, but he did as much as he could on his own, refusing to let Spock play servant to him. Any more than he had to, that is. There were some things he simply couldn't do on his own. Such as walking.

Every night, Spock came and curled up against Jim, and Jim wasn’t about to complain. The cave kept them out of danger of dying of hypothermia, but it still wasn’t exactly warm or comfortable, whereas Spock was both. And, if Jim was being totally honest, him being cute probably didn’t hurt either.

He would probably balk at being labelled ‘cute,’ but in Jim’s mind, it fit. Spock was cute.

The week passed fairly quickly and Jim was just getting into the rhythm of living in the cave with Spock at his side when suddenly he was being beamed back into the luxuries of Sarek’s mansion and watching as Spock stood, still solid, while he disappeared.


	6. Chess

Jim materialized on Sarek’s private transporter pad inside his house—because yes, he was that rich.

“Good God man, what happened to you?” McCoy asked. He whipped out a scanner and ran it over Jim’s body.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Jim said, because it looked really bad. He hadn’t showered or shaved in over a week. He was caked in red dust and brown dirt. All that remained of his clothes was 0.75 pairs of shredded, filthy pants and sandals that definitely looked like they had crossed a hundred miles.

Thank God he didn’t have the bloodstained cape on him. Bones would have had a heart attack right then and there.

The bloodstained Jim was bad enough.

“Come on, let’s get you checked out. I at least want to clean those cuts out before you go off doing something else stupid.” He and Sarek started heading out.

Bones stopped when he realized Jim wasn’t moving. “Jim?” he asked.

He hadn’t seen the leg yet. Not the back anyway, not where it was injured.

“Bones,” he said. Nervously. He gave a wan smile. “I’m gonna need some help getting there.”

McCoy paled and rushed to his friend’s side, supporting him while he threw an arm over his shoulders. He kept trying to get a peek at Jim’s injured leg while simultaneously walking him into another room, but the angle was off and he couldn’t.

He set Jim down on a couch in a sitting room and Sarek called for a slave to bring a first aid kit and a pitcher of water. McCoy gently lifted up Jim’s leg and took stock of the damage.

“Damn,” Jim laughed hollowly. “You know it’s bad when it makes the doctor grimace.”

McCoy set his leg down and steeled his face back to neutral. He was usually better than this. He could usually hide his reactions from his patients.

But that was the most torn-up leg he’d ever seen and it was on his best friend of all people. It was the worst non-fatal injury he’d ever seen.

“We’re gonna have to go to a hospital,” he said. Quietly. Calmly. “I can’t treat this here.”

* * *

 

McCoy got to be in charge of his treatment because he was the only doctor trained in humans on the planet and also because he bullied the Vulcans into letting him. He got the final say on everything regarding Jim’s treatment plan.

“You look like you’re about to tell me I’m dying,” Jim said lightly when he walked into the room. McCoy looked stricken.

Apologetic. Sympathetic.

“It’s not that bad. It’s nothing fatal.”

“Well I should certainly hope so,” he joked. “It’d be pretty lame to die of a dog bite, of all things. After all the crazy stunts I’ve pulled, I wanna die like… surfing a volcano or something.”

Bones didn’t laugh. Which wasn’t too unusual, but he didn’t roll his eyes either. He just kept on looking at Jim like he was his greatest fear and worst fear all rolled up in one.

“Your leg is—I’m not gonna lie, Jim, it’s pretty heavily infected.”

“So? You can treat that, right?”

He said nothing.

“Bones? Hello? Anybody home?”

He took a deep breath and muttered something.

“What was that?”

“We’re going to have to amputate.”

Jim froze.

The world paused in a never-ending moment.

“What?” he breathed.

McCoy finally got up the courage to look him in the eye. “We’re going to have to amputate,” he said, clearer now.

“You know, when I called you an old sawbones, that was always a joke,” he said, a bit breathless, a bit venomous, a bit hysteric. “You’re going to cut off my leg?”

“I’m sorry, Jim.”

“You’re sorry?!” he shrieked. “If you’re so sorry about it, then why don’t you save my fucking leg!”

“I can’t, Jim, there’s nothing that can be done, there’s just too much damage—“

“It’s 22-goddamn-54 and you can’t treat a simple dog bite without resorting to amputation?!”

“That ain’t no fucking dog bite, Jim, those creatures chewed up your leg like it was a damn steak,” he snapped.

“So?! And you can’t fix that?!”

“No! No, actually, I can’t just magically snap my fingers and produce a perfectly healthy leg for you! Well I can, but first I have to cut this ruined one  _off!”_

“Get out of my room! I don’t wanna see you again! You aren’t cutting off my fucking leg, and I’m gonna find a better doctor here who can save it.”

McCoy laughed bitterly. “Right, and then I’ll sprout wings and turn into the fucking tooth fairy.”

“Get  _out!”_

* * *

 

He cut off his leg.

Jim wasn’t speaking to him, or looking at him. He refused to allow him to come visit. His post-op care was done by a Vulcan healer and McCoy was only allowed to advise.

The prosthetic they gave him was designed for Vulcans. It was heavier than a human one would have been, designed for people with sturdier bones adjusted to denser gravity. The weight wasn’t really that much of a problem though.

It was sleek and strong and fast and looked just like real flesh until you got up close and realized the skin had that same quality as androids’ where something was just  _off_ —maybe it was the color, maybe it was the texture. Maybe a living creature could just tell when life was being impersonated.

It didn’t work that much different from a natural leg, so learning how to walk with it went surprisingly fast. He supposed he should have expected that. It wasn’t the dark ages any more.

They cleaned up and removed all of the cuts and patched up the bite in his shoulder. He was dehydrated and vitamin deficient. They made him take extremely huge pills for that, which he thought was unnecessary, just give him a burger or something. He’ll be fine now that he has access to normal food again.

He was only in the hospital for a week.

* * *

 

“Spock! You made it back! I was worried about you,” he said. “How’d the trip across the desert go?”

“I am unharmed,” he said.

“That bad, huh?”

“I imagine I fared better of the two of us.”

“Yeah, my week sorta sucked, but I’m out of the hospital now, and since you’re my nurse, that means I don’t actually have to stay in bed the entire time, right?”

Spock frowned. “Yes you do. I do not see why you would believe otherwise. I will not allow you to harm yourself further.”

“What? C’mon, Spock, you aren’t seriously gonna keep me cooped up all day, are you?”

“My orders are clear,” he said, in a tone of voice that implied this would be the exact situation even if his orders weren’t clear.

Jim sat back huffily in his bed that had too many pillows. “Well, fine then. So what do you wanna do? We can’t just do nothing in here all day.”

“I will do whatever you ask of me.”

“Spock, do  _you_ have any preferences?”

“My desires are irrelevant.”

“What were your favorite games as a kid? Maybe we can play one of those.”

“I did not play games as a child.”

“Wow, that’s… really sad,” Jim said. “Okay. How about… How about I teach you chess?”

“Chess is an Earth children’s game, I presume?”

“Not exactly. Adults play it too. Actually, mainly adults. It’s a strategy game. See, long ago, Earth used to be ruled by kings and queens too, and their children would inherit the throne. So to teach them how to strategize and win wars, these kids would be taught how to play chess. It’s a war game that kings would use to train the next generation. Nowadays it’s played by everybody, not just royalty.”

Spock looked interested, but—“I have no need of strategic training. I am in no position of command.”

Jim shrugged. “You can still play it for fun then.”

“I have no need of fun.”

He smiled. “Yes, you do. You most definitely do. So, what do you say? Does chess sound like fun?”

Spock considered him. Jim was a puzzle he could not quite figure out. His motives were still a mystery. But logic was a subject of secret interest to him. Perhaps enhancing his understanding of it would allow him to better understand the zhel-lan.

“Indeed,” he said.

“Great! The chess set is in that drawer over there.” Spock got it out and moved an end table to the side of the bed, setting the box on it. Jim opened it up and began setting up the pieces. “Now this entire first row are all pawns. Pawns don’t do much. They can only move straight forward, and only one space at a time, except on the very first move…”


	7. Meet the In-laws

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tela’at = elder

Spock wheeled Jim to sit across from Sarek at the head of banquet table. Other prominent members of the S’chn T’gai clan began filling up the rest of the seats. Spock moved to take his place against the wall with the other slaves, standing at the ready.  
  
Courtiers, essentially, Jim realized. They were courtiers.  
  
Tonight was a big night. This was his welcoming into the clan, his homecoming. Typically, a feast was held immediately following one’s kahs-wan, but there had been extenuating circumstances, so it had been postponed until Bones said it was okay.  
  
An elderly woman who looked a bit like a wizard in her dark and gauzy robes was carried in by slaves and placed at the head of the table. She must be pretty important, Jim figured, to usurp Sarek in the hierarchy when in his own home.  
  
“So!” A man slung an arm over his shoulders and took the seat at Jim’s side. “You must be Commander Kirk! I am Sybok, son of Sarek.”  
  
“You’re Spock’s brother?” he blurted.  
  
“He told you that?” His eyes were positively gleaming. The woman at the front paused in her movements and fixed her gaze on him.  
  
“No, but he told me he was Sarek’s son too. Wait, how come you aren’t enslaved?”  
  
Sybok looked taken aback, but pleased. “My mother was a Vulcan princess, not a bedslave. I inherited her title, as Spock inherited his mother’s.”  
  
“You two are brothers, but you’re a prince and he’s a slave? How is that right?”  
  
“It isn’t.” Now Sybok was looking at him like he was the Holy Grail.  
  
“You will cease this discussion at once,” the old woman said.  
  
“Yes, T’Pau,” Sybok said, but he gave Jim a sly grin when she wasn’t looking. He was going to like his brother’s husband, he could tell. It would be amazing not to be the only abolitionist in the House of Sarek.  
  
If Sybok played his cards right, he could have a fellow revolutionary on his hands.  
  
The slaves came forward and brought out plates of food in silent accord, moving seamlessly, efficiently. Jim waited for there to be a toast or a prayer or some sort of ritual or something, but everyone seemed to dig right in. He shrugged and began eating.  
  
Vulcan food had two modes: overpoweringly flavorful, and blander than sand. Jim spent a significant portion of the evening trying not to gag. To make matters worse, this was clearly a Fancy Occasion and thus required proper use of foreign eating utensils at all times, with absolutely no finger food. Jim just hoped he was even holding them right. He found himself looking to Sybok as a guide. He tried to make conversation a few times, but it Sybok wasn’t really participating, and he soon gave up.  
  
“Zhel-lan Kirk,” T’Pau said suddenly, once she was finished eating. “Tomorrow you will meet with the Vulcan High Council to discuss matters pertaining to your bond. Are you prepared to do this?”  
  
He swallowed his mouthful of food. “What?”  
  
“The High Council controls all matters in this sector of the planet. It is a great honor to come before them. You must not bring shame to my clan when doing so.”  
  
“What?” He paled.  
  
“When you are there, you will not claim that the kafeh is part of Sarek’s family. He is property of his house and nothing more. You will not question the ways of our people. You will not say anything against the elders of the High Council. You will not touch the food with your hands. You will not speak while you eat. In short, you are not to behave there as you have behaved today.”  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
“As you should be.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do not disgrace us further, son of George. You may be a zhel-lan in your Federation, but now you are also a member of this, and you must conduct yourself as such. I ask that you do not advocate the radical overthrow of our society at the dinner table. You are here to make allies, not enemies, are you not?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” he ground out.  
  
“Good. Then the matter is settled,” she said. “Do not be afraid, Zhel-lan Kirk. You will not be entirely among strangers there. I shall be one of the elders in attendance.”  
  
Great.  
  
He really couldn’t catch a break, could he?  
  
The slaves swept in silently and began gathering up the dishware. Jim murmured a quiet “thanks” as his plate was taken.  
  
“Do not do that there either,” T’Pau said.  
  
“What, are you kidding me? I can’t thank people?”  
  
“No, you cannot thank slaves. A thank you acknowledges a favor done amongst equals. A slave doing work is not deserving of thanks, as they are neither your equal nor doing anything more than what is expected of them.”  
  
Jim made a mental note to thank Spock for things as often as humanly possible.  
  
It was important to be aware of the guy’s culture, after all.

* * *

The meeting with the High Council took place in a deep-set cave far within some holy mountain, because apparently even the setting needed to be intimidating.  
  
Jim was led by slaves through a network of tunnels that opened into a massive cavern. The ceiling was maybe three stories high, and all the naturally occurring stalactites had been removed. In the center of the room was a long, polished obsidian banquet table, finely decorated and laid out with dozens of dishes. Jim was directed to a place of honor at the right hand of the head of the table.  
  
The High Council began filtering in, led by their respective slaves and sometimes warriors who Jim had to assume were there as bodyguards, which was… ominous. It was probably standard procedure, but still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were expecting somebody to be killed here tonight.  
  
Everybody took their seats and the extremely old, gender-ambiguous elder at the head of the table stood up. “We are here today to celebrate the first shan’hal’lak bond our world has seen in over 237 years. A toast, to Zhel-lan Kirk and his good fortune. May he live long and prosper.”  
  
The elders echoed their words, and then they all drank from a blue-purple wine that tasted like spices and cinnamon. Jim sipped it, and it felt cool and burning at the same time.  
  
“So, Zhel-lan,” the elder across from him started. “What are your intentions with the kafeh?”  
  
Jim almost laughed at the absurdity. Was he seriously about to be given the shotgun talk by some of the world leaders of Vulcan? That didn’t even make sense.  
  
“Umm, to free him?”  
  
“Have you considered your other options?”  
  
Oh. So this was the shotgun talk in reverse.  
  
“Yeah. I didn’t like my other options,” he said.  
  
“Perhaps you should reconsider them before making so radical a decision.”  
  
“The decision really wasn’t that radical for me. Where I come from, all people are free. It’s their natural state.”  
  
“That is not the way here.”  
  
“Well don’t worry. We don’t plan on sticking around here.”  
  
“We?”  
  
“Spock and I. The kafeh,” he explained. “I intend to take him with me back to the Federation. That is, if he wants to go.”  
  
“What will he do there, if he does not serve? He is a slave. He is not trained for anything but servitude.”  
  
“Well, that’s up to him. He can do whatever he wants.”  
  
She scoffed. “He is a slave. He has no ambitions.”  
  
Jim was getting so close to snapping and telling all the elders to go fuck themselves. “I think you’ll be surprised to find that people are people and they can all do pretty amazing things if you just give them a chance,” he said instead.  
  
“You cannot seriously expect a slave to become a productive member of society. They know only their master’s needs and desires. They are incapable of doing anything unless so directed. Their minds become soft and undeveloped after years of disuse. They desire a master to guide them as to how they should live.”  
  
Jim took a deep breath to keep himself from screaming. “Yeah, well, he’s gonna be my slave, so it’s my choice to free him if I want to.”  
  
“That is true,” she conceded. “But that does not make it a wise choice.”  
  
Another elder cut in. “I urge you to think about the repercussions your actions will have politically, for this planet. It is bad enough that the first shan’hal’lak bond in centuries was graced upon a slave. Do not upset things further by then freeing that slave. The others may begin to get ideas.”  
  
“Why, tela’at,” he smiled. “I thought their minds were too weak for that.”  
  
The elder glared at him. “The last uprising was only recently put down. We do not want another so soon. Dealing with slave rebellions is a waste of our military resources.”  
  
“Peace is rare and fragile and very hard-won. It would not do to destroy it over the sanctimony of one man,” a third elder said. “There are those who are displeased by a shan’hal’lak bond between an outworlder and a half-breed kafeh. It would be a shame if someone were to get hurt over it. I understand the kafeh is quite attached to another slave of Sarek’s house?”  
  
Jim’s blood ran cold.  
  
“Michael,” T’Pau said. “That is the kafeh which you are referring to.”  
  
“Ah,” the elder said. “So you see, Zhel-lan. It is in everyone’s best interests for you to… cooperate.”

* * *

Jim burst into the mansion and tore through the halls, then got out of his wheelchair and carefully limped down the precarious cellar stairs. It was late, and several of the slaves had already retired for the evening. Conversations stopped and heads snapped up when he walked in.  
  
“Spock!” he called, making his way over to the back corner. “Who is Michael?”  
  
“My sister,” he said automatically, surprised at the question. “How do you know of her?”  
  
“Shit,” Jim hissed. “You have a sister?”  
  
“’Sister’ is perhaps a misleading term. We are not related by blood. However, we grew up together and regard one another as family,” he said. He had a million questions he wanted to ask, but he refrained.  
  
“So, wait a second. You don’t consider your own father to be family, but this other slave you’re friends with, you do?”  
  
“That is an accurate assessment, yes.”  
  
“Shit,” he said again. “I just got back from the meeting with the elders, and I’m pretty sure they threatened to off her if I free you.”  
  
Spock stilled. His heart beat wildly against his ribcage. “Then I must request that you do not free me,” he said, perfectly calm, perfectly even.  
  
“No. I’m still freeing you, I just gotta figure out a way around this. This only means I have two slaves to rescue instead of one,” he said.


	8. Rumarie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is hands down the most ridiculous scene I’ve ever written, so please tell me what you think!
> 
> Viltah = Vulcan slur against mixed heritage

Jim woke up to a loud clatter just outside his door. He flung off the blanket and leapt into his nearby wheelchair to investigate.  
  
A slave he didn’t recognize was gathering up pots and pans, some of which had shattered on impact.  
  
“Here, let me help,” he said, leaning down to pick up shards.  
  
“Oh, no, trensu, it’s alright, you don’t have to—“  
  
“No, I’m happy to help,” he said. He placed his pile of shards into one of the pots and took half the stack from her. It was half her size, no wonder she had dropped it.  
  
“So, where we going? The kitchens?” he asked.  
  
“…Yes,” she said, still looking uncertain, as if this was a trap somehow. Jim set the dishes on his lap and followed her lead, wandering through the corridors until they reached the massive kitchen teeming with slaves.  
  
“T’Gasfa! Where have you been—“ the apparent slavemaster stopped short on catching sight of Jim. “Zhel-lan! Let me take those for you, I am so sorry this slave has disturbed you. She will be duly punished, I swear it.”  
  
“N—Uh, there’s no need for that. I was just… helping out,” he said. “Don’t punish her.”  
  
Why was he not allowed to be nice here? Was that really such a horrible thing? It had been no problem, really.  
  
The slavemaster raised an eyebrow. “As you wish,” she said. She turned her attention back to her subordinate and inspected the load. “Some of these dishes are broken.”  
  
T’Gasfa paled and Jim instantly knew that was a very, very bad thing.  
  
“It was me,” he said quickly. “I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I knocked her over. Sorry,” he shrugged carelessly.  
  
“You should be more mindful of where you step, T’Gasfa,” she said, her voice silky with implied threat. The girl was in for an earful the second Jim left. Hopefully that would be the worst of it, though.  
  
“So what are all these dishes for anyway? What’s all the fuss about?” he asked, aiming for distraction and noting the intense business around him. The kitchen was positively buzzing with activity, slaves rushing everywhere, preparing food, carrying dishes, mixing huge vats of drinks. A good 90% of it all seemed to be chocolate of some sort.  
  
Well, that was cool. Jim hadn’t known they had chocolate here, but apparently they did, and they had quite a taste for it.  
  
“We are preparing for Rumarie. It begins tomorrow.”  
  
“What’s Rumarie?”  
  
But she just shook her head and went back to work.  
  
That was… odd.  
  
Jim brushed it off and decided to ask Spock next time he saw him. For now, he had to eat breakfast and then spend the entire morning in physical therapy with Bones.

* * *

“Jim, stop. You need to take a break.”  
  
“No! I can do this!”  
  
Bones sighed and made the mistake of looking at his face. He got hit full-on with the puppy dog eyes, with just a hint of steely determination underneath. “Fine,” he huffed. “Three more steps. But then you’re done, you hear me?”  
  
Jim nodded, grinning, but too exhausted to say much else. Bones supported him by the arms and helped him use the prosthetic to take another shaky step, then another, then another.  
  
A knock sounded on the door and Bones called out a gruff “Come in” as he was helping Jim back into the wheelchair. When Spock entered, their hands were fully clasped together, intertwined obscenely. He averted his gaze.  
  
He had not known that the doctor and the zhel-lan’s relationship was of that nature, but it explained much. Why the doctor stayed behind when the rest of the humans left. Why things between them lately had been tense, yet there was still an undeniable closeness. Why the zhel-lan had not ordered Spock to his chambers during the nights.  
  
“I have come to bring you your lunch,” he said, rolling in a cart with two trays on it, laden down with food and drink. He gave a short bow and made for the door.  
  
“Wait!” Jim called. “Why don’t you stay a while? If you’re not too busy, that is. And if you wanna.”  
  
“Attending to you takes top priority over all my other duties, Zhel-lan,” he said.  
  
“Do you want to stay?”  
  
It be an absolute godsend to get away from the chaos of Rumarie preparations and Spock could almost cry in relief. “It is agreeable.”  
  
Jim looked at him, trying to decide if that was a ‘yes’ or not. He decided to test it against a baseline. “Want some kreyla?” he asked, holding up a slice.  
  
“No, thank you.”  
  
Jim could literally feel his hunger through the bond, and he was once again torn. He could order Spock to eat, but this was the first time he had actually said ‘no’ to something, and Jim didn’t want him to think that was meaningless.  
  
He had only said no because he thought saying ‘yes’ would mean taking away something Jim wanted, though.  
  
“Are you sure? Did you have lunch?”  
  
“Slaves do not partake in the midday meal. It interferes with our duties. Two meals a day is sufficient.”  
  
Jim took the plate of kreyla off the tray. “Here, you can have this. I wasn’t gonna eat it anyway.” Which absolutely wasn’t true and if Spock didn’t eat it, then he definitely would because Jim Kirk does not waste food.  
  
Bones knew that and sometimes abused it to his advantage by simply making Jim a salad and thus forcing him to eat it and be healthy for once. He was always such a smug bastard about it, too.  
  
Spock tentatively sat in one of the chairs and picked up a slice of kreyla. Jim smiled.  
  
“So what’s this Rumarie thing happening tomorrow? I keep hearing about it.”  
  
“Rumarie is the most significant cultural holiday on Vulcan. It lasts for three days, with the last day being the winter solstice. It is to thank the gods for delivering us through another year and another winter, and to celebrate the coming summer. It is the reason our wedding was scheduled as far back as it was. Sarek was reluctant to divert slaves away from preparations for one festivity in favor of another.”  
  
“Oh,” Jim said. “Well that sounds cool. So what happens, is it just like a bunch of dancing and singing or something?”  
  
“…In part.”

* * *

Jim and Bones ducked as a bottle went flying over their heads, smashing into the wall of Sarek’s house, followed by peals of shrieking laughter.  
  
“We’re going to get killed,” Bones muttered. Then, taking a look around, he amended, “If we’re lucky.”  
  
They had found out why Vulcans liked chocolate so much.  
  
There was maybe a hundred and fifty people milling about Sarek’s estate, and only the slaves were sober. A third of the guests were naked or stripping off their clothing in some manner, and ‘fully clothed’ was a very loose term when it came to the rest.  
  
They had already witnessed three fistfights and one guy getting stabbed in the arm. A surprising number of people had brought weapons, as if they were prepared for this.  
  
But no armor; no, that’d cover too much skin. Armor was for cowards.  
  
Every person there was covered in some degree of body paint done in the green-black oil of rillan gourds, the same stuff that had been put on Jim before his kahs-wan. Some people just had a few swirling designs on their faces or hands, others were covered head to foot. There had been tables of people doing body painting before, but they had soon devolved into things either vaguely sexual or grown adults running around and chasing each other with paintbrushes and globs of oil on their hands.  
  
They had learned that the house was off-limits because that was where everyone was having sex. Orgies, mostly. They had discovered this when Bones went inside to use the bathroom and immediately stumbled upon a group of Vulcans having sex in the foyer. They had invited him to join in.  
  
At first Jim had been shocked by that because that was brazen, even for him, but as the day wore on, he realized he should be grateful they at least had the decency or presence of mind to go indoors. These people were _drunk_.  
  
Another staple of Rumarie seemed to be the idea that anything goes, with no consequences. When that guy had gotten stabbed, Jim had asked if anyone was going to call the cops, because surely even a savage world had to have some way of enforcing their laws. The Vulcan he’d been talking to had laughed and said the two men involved in the fight _were_ cops.  
  
“Kirk!” a familiar voice called out. An arm was draped over his shoulders, and Sybok leaned in close, his breath smelling so strongly of chocolate that Jim almost gagged on it. “D’you know how to play Rigellian strip poker?”  
  
“Yeah?” he asked, holding back a laugh.  
  
“Great! Come play with us!”  
  
“Sybok, not to burst your bubble or anything, but don’t you have to be wearing clothes first in order to play strip poker?”  
  
He looked down at himself and seemed to realize just then that he was naked. He jutted his chin out defiantly. “Not if I intend to win.”  
  
“Alright, well who am I to argue with that logic?” Jim laughed and let himself be led away. Bones grabbed him by the arm.  
  
“This is a terrible idea,” he said.  
  
“Bones, when in Rome…”  
  
“This is not a ‘when in Rome’ situation!”  
  
“Why? What’s the worst that could happen?”  
  
“Death!”  
  
“I’ll be fine, Bones. Besides, if you’re so worried, then why don’t you come play with me?”  
  
He huffed. “With that crowd? Not in a million years.”  
  
Jim clapped him on the arm. “See ya later.”  
  
The Vulcans put a twist on Rigellian strip poker. Every new hand, everyone playing had to eat a chocolate candy. When Jim told them that humans were immune to the effects of chocolate, he had to explain that alcohol does the same thing for them or else be kicked out of the game for cheating. His bowl of candy was quickly replaced with a glass, though the Vulcans thought it was strange that a drink could have that effect on someone.  
  
Jim was the first player to be fully stripped down, mostly because the Vulcans were curious to see what humans were equipped with. Also he was partly sure they thought he was exotic and attractive because of it. They kept commenting on his ‘sunshine hair.’  
  
Spock was the slave who was serving their table, on Sybok’s request, and Jim had a sneaking suspicion the guy did that to keep an eye on him and keep him away from some of the rowdier guests.  
  
Sybok had introduced the group as some of his closest friends and enemies, which Jim had thought (hoped) was a joke at the time, but it soon became apparent it was not.  
  
Spock was refilling the group’s bowls with chocolate candies when a topless Vulcan woman said lazily, “Shame about that slave and the shan’hal’lak bond. Such a great honor, and so wasted on a human and a viltah whore.”  
  
Sybok’s eyes blazed. “You will not speak of my brother that way.”  
  
“Brother? You call a slave your brother?” a man who was down to just his loincloth asked, scandalized.  
  
“He is my father’s son,” he said. “And you will address him directly as a person in his own right.”  
  
Spock froze where he was. So far, he had been doing a great job of pretending he wasn’t the slave they were talking about, or possibly, that he was deaf.  
  
He should say something.  
  
He couldn’t say anything.  
  
“Unlike you, I would never debase myself by acknowledging a slave as my equal.”  
  
Sybok stood up abruptly. “Let us see if your sword has as much courage as your words,” he said dangerously.  
  
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa,” Jim said. “Let’s not do anything rash here.”  
  
"Yes, Sybok, do think logically. You and your compatriots are greatly outnumbered here. Just because you are the prince does not guarantee your safety. After all, it is Rumarie. Accidents happen,” the woman said.  
  
“Even on Rumarie, you could not get away with the assassination of a prince,” he said haughtily. Which was a bit overconfident of him, in Jim’s opinion.  
  
“Who said anything about assassination? A duel has been challenged. By law, blood can be spilt.”  
  
“Nobody challenged you to a duel,” Jim said.  
  
“Ah, yes, but after you are all dead, who is to know that?”  
  
She drew her weapon and that’s when things exploded.  
  
Sybok and his friend, that T’Pring chick, had their swords out in nanoseconds, and they were soon fighting back-to-back. Jim wheeled away from the table as fast as he could and grabbed a big stick and started swinging it around.  
  
God, he should have taken Sulu up on those swordsmanship lessons.  
  
The two Vulcans were joined by a third, a guy named Stonn, and ganged up on by the five other guests at the card table. Swords clashed and clanged, two people were wielding massive battle axes that Sybok had called lirpas, Jim was screaming his head off and waving his stick around and getting pretty much ignored, Spock was ducking under swinging blades and rushing over to pull him out of the fray when the woman from earlier unsheathed a small dagger and nearly plunged it into his side but Jim saw it happening and batted it to the ground sharply, conking her over the head for good measure. She dropped like a stone.  
  
Spock grabbed the handles of Jim’s wheelchair and ran him into the house, past moaning couples and groups until he found another slave. “Alert the guard, the prince is in danger,” he said tersely. The slave nodded and ran off.  
  
He wheeled Jim to his room, kicked out the three people using it (Jim was going to sanitize _everything_ ), and then finally stopped moving for the first time all day. He stood brusquely at attention, face pale and drawn, a trickle of green blood running down his side.  
  
“Do you require anything else, Zhel-lan?” he asked.  
  
“Spock oh my god are you kidding me? You almost died! Are you okay?”  
  
“I am adequate.”  
  
“You’re bleeding!”  
  
“The wound is superficial.”  
  
“You’re… ridiculous. Sit down on the bed over there, let me get something.” He wheeled over to the desk and pulled out the roll of leftover bandages he used to wrap his shoulder with. He tossed them lightly to Spock, and averted his gaze as the man took off his tunic.  
  
Humans had very curious senses of propriety, Spock concluded. Jim was the one who was fully naked here.  
  
He also seemed to be just realizing that. What had been perfectly acceptable while playing strip poker and surrounded by other equally nude people now seemed entirely inappropriate when it was just the two of them, with Spock half-dressed and on Jim’s bed. It made Jim feel like some leering pervert. He turned away towards the dresser and tried to pull on a robe as un-awkwardly as possible.  
  
It only took Spock a few seconds to get the bandages around because it really was just a scratch. Jim had knocked the knife out of her hand just in the nick of time. A half-second later and he would have been stabbed straight through the liver—presuming his liver was in the same place as a human’s was.  
  
“Are you alright?” Jim asked.  
  
“Yes, Zhel-lan. I am adequate.”  
  
“You know you can call me Jim, right? If we’re gonna be married, you don’t need to address me by my rank all the time.”  
  
“You previously stated that only your friends can address you in that manner?”  
  
“Well, yeah. I’d like to think we can at least be friends, Spock, don’t you?”  
  
And there he goes again, putting them on an equal plane. But he didn’t like it when Spock disputed that, so he would have to learn to get used to it, at least to humor him.  
  
“Indeed.”


	9. Politics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shakalar = fiends
> 
> Kir = the sector this is taking place in/what Sybok is the prince of. It’s a Vulcan province in canon, but in this fic the provinces are essentially kingdoms of their own due to all the division and war on the planet
> 
> Na’nam = the biggest continent on Vulcan, the one where all the important stuff is
> 
> I saw a political cartoon about church reform the other day where ancient people were performing a human sacrifice and two citizens in the foreground were using the age old excuse “it’s not a perfect system but it’s the best one we’ve got.” I thought that could be applied broad spectrum to a lot of institutions, hence Jim’s conversation with Sarek
> 
> Also I think even pre-reform Vulcans would do that asshole thing where if you get angry while arguing with them, then you automatically lose no matter what

T’Pring wiped the blood off her sword, fascinated by the way the deep green caught the light. Sybok and Stonn had held their own in the fight, sure, but she was the one who had killed two and sent the rest scattering.  
  
There was a reason she was the prince’s chief bodyguard.  
  
A slave approached her. “Lord Sarek wishes to see you, miss, as well as Sir Stonn and the prince.”  
  
“I expected as much,” she said. “Have these bodies removed and the families alerted. Stonn! Sybok! With me.”  
  
She sheathed her sword and sauntered back into Sarek’s mansion, the men following her one on each side.

* * *

“What, exactly, happened?” Sarek asked. The three young adults stood before the desk in his study, where he was seated imperiously.  
  
“Some punk shakalar tried to kill me again. It’s okay, though, T’Pring handled it,” Sybok said.  
  
“What did you do to provoke them?” Sarek asked flatly.  
  
“I didn’t provoke them, _they_ provoked _me_!”  
  
“Lady T’Mana and Sir Sbavon made some disparaging comments about Spock, and Sybok defended him and called him his equal. Threats were thrown from both sides. T’Mana suggested that she was going to kill us all and claim we had challenged her to a duel, and then she attempted to do so,” T’Pring said.  
  
“What are the casualties?”  
  
“Two dead, one wounded. The ones that survived have fled. Your slaves are taking care of the bodies.”  
  
“Good,” he nodded. “You two are dismissed. Sybok, you stay.”  
  
They left and Sybok stood his ground determinedly, refusing to be intimidated.  
  
“Sybok. My son. This is the third assassination attempt this year and the eighth one overall.”  
  
“That is not my fault.”  
  
“Most royals’ bodyguards are a mere formality. That yours are not implies you are doing something different.”  
  
“You will not make me regret my choices, Father. I stand by my words.”  
  
“I realize you cannot be persuaded to alter your stance. However—“  
  
“No.”  
  
“I ask that you at least exercise discretion—“  
  
“No.”  
  
“Please—tone it down.”  
  
Sybok rested his hands on the desk. “No.”  
  
“Sybok.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. He felt so much older than just 92. “The number of people who are pro-slavery in Kir is extremely large. If you do not stop being so blatant with your opinions, your reign may not be long enough for you to make the changes you wish, if you even live to see it.”  
  
“I don’t care. And today wasn’t even about that. They created that situation to disguise their true intent. One of them tried to stab Spock through the heart.”  
  
“And you believe that the true target of the assassination attempt was a household slave and not the rebel prince of Kir?” Sarek asked. He was very tired.  
  
“They waited until he was there with us to start the fight. They could have done that at any moment they chose, but they waited until it was certain he would be drawn into it.”  
  
“Are you certain they did not do this simply to provoke you more easily?”  
  
“The argument was not about my political views, it was about them believing Spock to be unworthy of his shan’hal’lak bond,” he said. “Think about it, Father. This happens the very day after Kirk meets with the elders, and you know how well that probably went. He still intends to free Spock. The High Council likely did everything they could to dissuade him, but nothing worked, and so now they must resort to calming the spectacle themselves before it gets out of hand. They will do anything to prevent the wedding from going through. You know this.”  
  
“Your theory is flawed. The zhel-lan himself would have made a far more accessible target, especially during Rumarie.”  
  
“But his death would cause a diplomatic incident, whereas Spock’s wouldn’t even result in a murder charge, as he is legally classed as property, not a person.” His voice was bitter now. “The last slave rebellion was only recently suppressed, and at high cost. A slave being elevated to such a high position so soon after is bound to cause unrest, if not an open outbreak of war. In their eyes, it’s better to kill him now before it comes to that.”  
  
“What you are suggesting is preposterous. You think the Council paid for this incident to occur?”  
  
“Yes. Think about it. Spock wasn’t involved in the fight at all. All he did was attempt to move Kirk to safety, and he nearly got stabbed for it. Why would T’Mana do that? Why did she wait until he was there to make her comments? Why were they directed at him rather than at me? Her issue was with the shan’hal’lak bond, and my views on slavery only came up later.”  
  
Sarek considered that. It sounded like a conspiracy theory, frankly, but in situations this absurd, conspiracy theories became plausible. And, if he was truly honest, he had known the High Council to do far worse in the past. This was actually fairly reasonable for them.  
  
“Bring Spock in here. I wish to speak with him. And the zhel-lan too.”

* * *

Spock rapped lightly on the heavy wooden door and waited for permission before entering. “You requested our presence, trensu?”  
  
“Yes. I wish to inform you of a theory of Sybok’s. He believes that you were the true target of the assassination attempt today. I am not quite sure I believe him, but nevertheless, I thought to inform you.”  
  
“What?!” Jim squawked.  
  
“Spock, you are heretofore forbidden from leaving the estate grounds, as a precautionary measure. Zhel-lan Kirk, I would advise you to exercise caution, though I doubt it to be necessary.”  
  
“You doubt it to be necessary? You just said someone’s trying to kill us!”  
  
“Not a mere ‘someone.’ The High Council. And I said that they were trying to kill Spock, not you.”  
  
_“Why?”_  
  
“Sybok theorizes it is due to your refusal to see reason when it comes to your decision to free the kafeh following your marriage.”  
  
“Why is that such a big deal to everybody?”  
  
“Because, Kirk, slavery is the way of our planet. It has driven us to riches and prosperity for millennia. Great works have been accomplished because of it. And now a slave has been blessed with the first shan’hal’lak bond in centuries—on the heels of a revolt, no less—and you state you intend to make him a free person. The slaves will revolt again, for certain. Kir will be plunged into chaos, and our enemies will take advantage of that weakness and invade. You will start a war, Kirk. Thousands, if not millions, of lives will be lost. Slave lives. Will that dissuade you?”  
  
“You ever think that maybe if the people keep trying to overthrow the government then maybe, just maybe, there’s something wrong with your system?”  
  
“The government will never be able to please everybody, Zhel-lan. Admittedly, the system is not without its flaws. However, it is still the best system we have.”  
  
“It’s all you’ve ever known, is what you mean.”  
  
“Precisely.”  
  
“You could do better than this! Sarek, if this many people are this upset, then that is a sign that something is deeply wrong!”  
  
“The people will always be upset with the government over one thing or another. It is the way of things.”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be this bad though!”  
  
“It will never be perfect.”  
  
“I’m not saying that it needs to be perfect, I’m saying that it needs to be a whole hell of a lot better than this!”  
  
“You are emotionally disturbed,” he said. “I will not hear the words of one in rage. Go find your peace, then we may continue this discussion.”  
  
Jim wanted to scream or hit something. He spun in his wheelchair and stormed out.

* * *

Spock found him in his chambers later.  
  
“Zhe—Jim, I have a request to make,” he said.  
  
Jim straightened up. “Yeah, what is it?”  
  
“I request that you do not marry me.”  
  
“Can I ask why?”  
  
“The cost would be too great.”  
  
“Spock, that’s not—Okay. What do you mean by that?”  
  
“The High Council has tried to assassinate us and they have threatened my sister. The threat of war hangs over our heads. You have already lost your leg in your efforts. This has caused a strain in your relationship with the doctor.”  
  
“I mean, yeah I was pissed off at Bones for amputating my leg at first, but then I got over it. And what’s that got to do with our marriage?”  
  
Now Spock was confused. “That is not the discord to which I was referring.”  
  
“Then what were you talking about?”  
  
“Your romantic involvement with him. You marrying another—“  
  
“What?!” he asked. “Bones and I aren’t… _involved_. Where did you even get that idea?”  
  
“The other day I walked in on you with your hands intertwined.”  
  
“That was for physical therapy.”  
  
“Is that what you call it?”  
  
“Okay. Okay, wait, hold up. Is holding hands, like, a really big deal on your planet?”  
  
“It is an extremely intimate gesture, yes.”  
  
“Oh,” he said. “Well it’s not on Earth. It’s pretty common for friends to hold hands there.”  
  
Spock’s eyebrows shot up. “Even given the sexual sensitivity of the hands?”  
  
“Sexual sensitivity? Hands don’t—do your hands have sexual sensitivity?”  
  
“I believe that was clear.”  
  
“Oh my god,” he said. “So on that first day when I grabbed your hands…”  
  
Spock looked at him quizzically.  
  
“Oh my god! Oh my god, why didn’t you say anything?!”  
  
“As my master, it is your prerogative to do with me what you wish.”  
  
Jim’s face turned mutinous. “Spock, it’s nobody’s prerogative to fucking grope you. That’s not okay. That’s never okay. Did you seriously think I would…?” He couldn’t even finish the sentence.  
  
“Sarek has made it perfectly clear that I am to be a slave to all of your desires.”  
  
His own dad.  
  
That was the final straw.  
  
Jim angrily wheeled himself back through the corridors to Sarek’s study. He pounded on the door and then barged in without waiting for an answer.  
  
“Hey! You! What the hell is wrong with you? You’re pimping out your own son?”  
  
“I am afraid I do not understand.”  
  
So they had another argument and it went nowhere and accomplished nothing and Jim stormed out in fury yet again, followed by Spock yet again.  
  
Jim was starting to understand why Spock didn’t think of Sarek as his father. That made everything so much worse than it would be otherwise.

* * *

He and Bones spent the rest of Rumarie holed up in Jim’s room with the door locked. They alternated between playing gin rummy and poker, telling each other lame stories and bad jokes. Sometimes they argued, mostly because they were trapped in a room with each other for two days. They had long since gotten over the leg thing.  
  
Jim did a lot of physical therapy those two days.  
  
His progress was coming along. Bones made an off-handed joke that he would be able to walk down the aisle instead of being wheeled down it.  
  
If Vulcan weddings even had aisles.  
  
As soon as Rumarie ended, the slaves got to work preparing for the wedding and the masters of the house nursed their chocolate hangovers. Sybok stayed in his room for a whole week, groaning and sleeping and covered in aches. Apparently one single attempted murder wasn’t enough to stop the party over. Jim had a sneaking suspicion that was almost par for the course for Rumarie, the only difference this time was that politics were involved.  
  
The wedding seemed to be a much bigger deal than Rumarie, and certainly a bigger deal than any Earth wedding Jim had ever been to. From what he understood, the entire S’chn T’Gai clan was coming, along with representatives from every clan in Kir. He had even heard of some of the highest nobles from the other sectors stating their intent to attend.  
  
Apparently Vulcan weddings worked differently from Earth weddings in that the guests were expected to invite themselves, essentially. But only certain people were allowed to. The whole house and clan, the matriarchs and patriarchs of other clans in the kingdom, and the ruling families of all the other sectors. Usually very few people chose to invite themselves, and weddings typically extended only to one’s house or a bit into the more distant clan.  
  
But this, however, was a shan’hal’lak wedding. The first in over 237 years. Almost everyone who was permitted to attend was going to be there, including every royal in Na’nam. Courtiers were coming in from every sector on the planet. It was the biggest affair in centuries.  
  
Even if the entire Enterprise crew beamed down to watch their Chief Science Officer get married, the number of human guests still wouldn’t tally up to the number of Vulcan guests.  
  
Then finally the big day was here.


	10. Ceremony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for attempted murder and successful murder
> 
> Kah-if-farr = it is time, a ceremonial bonding phrase
> 
> Kroykah = stop

“Pike! You’re back!” Jim yelled. He probably would have thrown his arms around his superior officer in a hug, but a) that was completely unprofessional, and b) he probably would’ve collapsed, and that’d be embarrassing.  
  
“What the hell happened to you? I only left you here for a _month_. To get _married_. And you haven’t even done that yet,” he said, taking in Jim’s wheelchair.  
  
“Pike, the Vulcans keep trying to kill me,” he said very seriously.  
  
Pike didn’t roll his eyes, but he did have that look on his face and he did turn to Bones for a better explanation. Bones threw his hands up helplessly. “The kid invites death! I don’t know what to tell ya. He’s almost died twice since you left.”  
  
“Bones, you were supposed to keep him safe. I leave you two alone for one month—“  
  
“Hey, on the plus side, we didn’t start any wars,” Jim said.  
  
“Yet,” Sarek said ominously. Pike’s eyes snapped to him alertly, but he waved it off. “My slave Michael will escort you to your guest chambers, where you may change in preparation for the wedding. Sybok, where is Michael?”  
  
He shrugged. “I haven’t seen her all day.”  
  
“That’s curious. Perhaps I’ll ask the slavemaster,” he said. He signaled to another slave, who came running over. “Show Captain Pike to his chambers posthaste.”  
  
The slave nodded and led Pike into the mansion. Sarek zeroed in on Jim.  
  
“Kirk, where is my slave?”  
  
“What do you mean? You just sent her off.”  
  
“No, where is Michael?”  
  
“Who’s Michael?”  
  
“Do not play the fool with me. If Spock has not told you about her, then Sybok has. An abolitionist comes to my house, marries a slave, and then suddenly that slave’s companion comes up missing? Do not insult my intelligence. Where is Michael?”  
  
“I have no idea,” Jim said. Their eyes locked for several tense moments.  
  
“Not to interrupt the dramatic stare-down or anything, but we’ve got a wedding in thirty minutes…” Sybok said.  
  
Sarek turned and left to attend to last-minute preparations. Jim flipped him off behind his back. He didn’t see it and he wouldn’t have known what it meant even if he did, but it felt good anyway.

* * *

The wedding did have an aisle, as it turned out. The aisle was a half a mile path through the desert leading up the base of a mountain, however, and under no circumstances was Jim to attempt to walk it.  
  
Vulcans don’t really have a concept of a best man, but Bones got to wheel him down the aisle. Somewhat begrudgingly. It was a long walk. A long, awkward walk.  
  
Vulcans lined both sides of the path like spectators at a parade. They were all dressed in weird and elaborate robes and veils, some wearing gems and cast iron jewelry, others wearing bones and tusks like primitive cavemen. They were chanting something in Vulcan, something in the holy Golic dialect that was too ancient to properly translate.  
  
Bells were jangling in an even rhythm with every one of Bones’ footsteps. The chanting was low and slow and timed to match. It started to speed up. So did the bells. Bones started hurrying.  
  
Jim was promptly deposited at the base of the mountain and Bones disappeared into the crowd.  
  
Spock banged a gong.  
  
All was silent.  
  
He knelt before T’Pau, who placed her gnarled fingers on his meld points and closed her eyes. After several moments, she opened them and beckoned to Kirk, who did the same.  
  
“What thee are about to see comes down from the time of beginning without change. This is the Vulcan heart. This is the Vulcan soul. This is our way. _Kah-if-farr!”_  
  
The bells started ringing again, rapidly now. Spock banged the gong again.  
  
An arrow zipped through the air and bounced off the gong, just inches from Spock’s head.  
  
“ _Kroykah_!”  
  
The humans in the crowd were freaking out, whereas the Vulcans were more along the lines of subdued murmuring. Pike looked ready to rush the mountain himself, phaser out.  
  
T’Pring had her sword at a man’s throat within seconds.  
  
“It was he who fired the arrow,” she declared. And then she skewered him right through the gut.  
  
“ _What_ _the_ _fuck_.”  
  
Is this how they mete out justice on Vulcan?  
  
To all of the humans’ utter horror, the Vulcans merely ignored the man bleeding out on the dust and went back to observing the ceremony. Bones rushed over to the would-be assassin and started pulling out his medkit. T’Pring held him back with one hand.  
  
“You will cease your ministrations, doctor,” she said.  
  
“This man is dying! He needs medical attention!”  
  
“You will let him die.”  
  
“No! Are you crazy--?”  
  
She pinched a nerve in his neck and he collapsed to the ground in a pool of green blood.  
  
She yanked her sword back out of the dying man’s stomach. It was dripping with blood and guts. “Are there any further objections?”  
  
There weren’t.  
  
The ceremony continued peacefully after that, if a bit tensely. T’Pau spoke for an hour in untranslatable Vulcan, which was just thrilling. Spock banged the gong again. And then they both gave the ta’al and pressed their hands fully together.  
  
And it was over.

* * *

The ceremony was followed by a wedding feast, which was only offered to the fifty most important guests. Everyone else had to leave.  
  
Bones almost got kicked out to make room for the princess of Shi’al, which would have made Kirk and Pike the only humans there.  
  
It was a shan’hal’lak wedding, after all. The first in centuries. Everyone who was anyone wanted to see it, or possibly stop it.  
  
Jim helped himself to a bowl of thick curry, and—“Wait, let me scan it first. God knows what’s in this alien food; you might be allergic to something.”  
  
Jim nearly rolled his eyes. “Bones, come on—“  
  
“It is technically protocol, Jim,” Pike said. Kirk sighed and let Bones run his tricorder over the curry.  
  
“There’s cyanide in this!” he yelped.  
  
“So? The flavor may be slightly off, but I do not see the cause for such great alarm,” Sarek said.  
  
“Cyanide is lethal to humans, Ambassador. It’s one of the deadliest poisons on Earth,” Pike said, putting his spoon down with a sense of finality.  
  
“Not just humans—any creature with iron-based blood will be killed by it. It may be perfectly safe for all you green-blooded Vulcans, but it would have killed off the happy couple here. Spock’s a hybrid, his blood has human elements in it, the chemicals would have reacted and killed him too,” Bones said.  
  
Sarek rose from his seat. “Remove the curry from the table at once. Have all the kitchen slaves and the slavemaster report to me directly.”

* * *

It turned out to be T’Gasfa. The woman broke down sobbing as she confessed. The High Council had offered to buy and free her and her brother if she had done it. Just a little pinch of cyanide and no one would ever know, and the human problem would be eliminated.  
  
“I-I-I’m so s-sorry. They offered me… I had to do it. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, Zhel-lan, I did not want to. You showed me kindness and I returned it with—with brutality. I do not deserve your mercy,” she said. She couldn’t meet his eyes, tears streaming down her face.  
  
Sarek nodded and handed Kirk a sword. “You may do the honors.”  
  
He dropped the sword with a clang. “No!”  
  
“Whyever not?”  
  
“I’m not going to kill her!”  
  
“I repeat, whyever not?”  
  
“Because that’s wrong! You don’t take innocent lives!”  
  
“She is hardly innocent. She has confessed to her crimes. This is your legal right.”  
  
“Well I refuse. I’m not killing her. That’s not how we do things on Earth.” He folded his arms.  
  
“Very well,” Sarek said, picking up the sword. He held it high in the air, and—  
  
“No!”  
  
Kirk tackled him to the ground before he could strike. The sword fell harmlessly through the air and the ambassador hit the ground with a grunt.  
  
“What is the purpose of this?” he asked.  
  
“I said she was supposed to be spared!”  
  
“No, you said you would not kill her yourself.”  
  
“Oh, you know what I meant, you asshole.” He stood and brushed himself off. He went over to comfort the crying T’Gasfa, assuring her that it was alright, that she was forgiven, that she would live. She gushed her thanks profusely and ran out of the kitchen.

* * *

“You weren’t kidding when you said these Vulcans keep trying to kill you,” Pike said.  
  
“Yeah, no shit. Sir.”  
  
“We’re off duty. You can call me Chris.” Pike waved it off. “So any idea why they keep trying to kill you?”  
  
“Oh, it’s just politics. They think me freeing Spock is going to cause unrest with the slaves. They just had a revolt not too long ago, and they don’t want another one.”  
  
“Sounds like they have it coming.”  
  
Jim huffed a laugh.

* * *

They decided to have the freeing ceremony in private, with only Sarek, Spock, and Jim in attendance. Less chance of someone getting killed that way.  
  
They were in a small chamber dimly lit by rows and rows of candles. There was a table set up in the center, containing a rillan gourd, brush, cloth, and a bowl of warm water. Spock had changed out of his elaborate wedding attire and back into his simple slave’s uniform.  
  
Sarek dipped a brush in rillan oil and wrote the name of his house on Spock’s forehead. He wet the cloth and washed the lettering off.  
  
“I release Spock, kafeh t’Sarek, of the clan of S’chn T’Gai unto thee, Zhel-lan James Tiberius Kirk of the Enterprise.”  
  
He handed the brush to Jim, who dipped it back in the gourd. He carefully wrote ‘Enterprise’ on Spock’s forehead, figuring that was the closest thing he had to a house name.  
  
“I release Spock, kafeh t’James, of the clan of S’chn T’Gai, unto thyself,” he said. And he washed the lettering off.  
  
Spock looked to him in wonder, as if he was only just now comprehending that this was real. Jim felt a wave of gratitude and awe and overpowering _freedom_ course through the bond towards him.  
  
“I thank thee,” Spock said.  
  
It was real. Jim had really done it. He could believe it now. He could hope and dream and wish and wonder and do whatever he wanted.  
  
What did he want?

* * *

He went to Sybok, as obviously going to Michael was not an option.  
  
“He freed me,” he said, still a bit shocked, a bit numb. It didn’t feel real yet. It was real, but that hadn’t quite hit him. It was still too good to be true. Jim was still too good to be true.  
  
“That’s amazing! I told you he would!” Sybok threw himself around him in a huge hug, then pulled back to reveal the wide grin on his face. “I’m so happy for you, little brother!”  
  
“Thank you,” he said. And he meant more than just for the congratulations. Sybok had been an excellent brother to him when he didn’t have to, when it would have been easier for him to ignore Spock’s existence. He had been family to him when no one else had.  
  
Except Michael.  
  
“What are you going to do now?” Sybok asked.  
  
“I do not know. But if I stay here, I will be killed.”  
  
“Perhaps the zhel-lan will take you with him.”  
  
“If he intended to do that, he would not have freed me.”  
  
“How do you know? Did you ask him?”  
  
“No, but—“  
  
“You can’t know unless you ask him.”  
  
“Technically, but I can infer—“  
  
“Spooock,” he said in a singsong voice. “Ask the zhel-lan if you can go with him. I’m sure he’ll say yes. Your husband seems to be a decent man.”  
  
“Huband,” he repeated numbly. He was… married. It had actually happened. He had actually gotten married.  
  
“Yeah, husband,” Sybok said with a sly grin. “And not too bad looking, either.”  
  
He burst out laughing when Spock blushed.

* * *

“Zhel-lan, I deeply apologize, but I have one last request to make of you,” Spock said.  
  
Well, that was ominous. “What is it?” he asked warily.  
  
“May I accompany you aboard the Enterprise?” he asked in a single breath. He waited anxiously for an answer. This was his last hope, his final option. If Kirk said no, he didn’t know what he would do.  
  
Jim smiled softly. “Of course you can, Spock, you’re my husband. What, did you think I would just abandon you here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cyanide is lethal because it binds with the iron ions in the blood of mammals and prevents oxygen from being carried. Since Vulcans have copper based blood, they could use it as a casual seasoning for all the harm it would do them. Who knows, maybe it tastes good. It’s actually less lethal even to humans when mixed with sugar and alcohol


	11. Tour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of a shorter chapter, sorry :/

Pike, Bones, and Jim were the last of the Enterprise crew to beam up. They wanted to give Spock extra time to pack up his things and say his goodbyes.  
  
He placed a single suitcase and his ka’athyra on the transporter pad.  
  
“Is that all you have?” Jim blurted. That suitcase didn’t even look very full, and it definitely should.  
  
“I require little,” he said simply.  
  
“Goodbye, my brother,” Sybok said, embracing him in a final hug. “You have to vidcall me at least once a week, or else. Jim will show you how to do it. Is that understood?”  
  
“Affirmative, my prince,” he said. Sybok hugged him again and then stepped away, smiling with watery eyes.  
  
“Farewell, Spock,” said Sarek.  
  
“Farewell, Sarek,” came the crisp reply. The humans took their places on the transporter pad.  
  
“Energize, Scotty,” Pike said. They disappeared in a shimmer of golden light, and then they were back aboard the ship.  
  
“Here, let me carry your lyre for you at least,” Jim said, taking the instrument from Spock, who merely nodded and hefted the suitcase up carefully. Jim led him to their new adjoined quarters, showing Spock into his own room first.  
  
“And this is your room!” he said grandly. Spock looked around inquisitively.  
  
“It is large,” he said.  
  
“Not really,” Jim said. A thought occurred to him. “Have you ever had a room all to yourself?”  
  
“No, I have not.”  
  
He set the suitcase down gently and unzipped it. Michael stood up and stretched her aching limbs.  
  
“By the gods, it feels good to get out of there,” she said.  
  
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jim said. “Only way we could smuggle you on board.”  
  
“It is no matter. I am thankful for your kindness. How long until we reach our destination?”  
  
“If all goes well, we’ll be at the nearest starbase in eight days. Once we’re there, you can get off and be granted asylum as a Vulcan refugee. As a human, you have an automatic right to homeworld citizenship according to the Federation constitution. You can go to Earth and live as a free person,” he grinned.  
  
“Thank you, Zhel-lan. I am forever indebted to you,” she said.  
  
He shook his head. “No you aren’t. I was glad to help. But hey, uh, for now maybe don’t leave this room or let anyone know you’re here? You’re technically a stowaway and if Pike finds out I brought you on board, I’ll be in big trouble. And we’re still in Vulcan space, so that would be double bad.”  
  
She nodded. “I shall hide.”  
  
He nodded and gestured to the suitcase. “Is that seriously all you guys brought?”  
  
“This is all that we possess,” Spock said.  
  
The suitcase contained a pair of pajamas and a change of clothes for each of them, Michael’s kolchak, and two books. Michael picked up one of them.  
  
Alice in Wonderland.  
  
“Lady Amanda used to read this to us down in the slaves’ quarters. It was the only item she retained from back on Earth. She said it was a human tradition to read children stories before they went to bed. She often expressed regret that she only had the one.”  
  
“Lady Amanda?” Jim asked.  
  
“My mother,” Spock said. Technically, as a bedslave and an outworlder, she bore no title of nobility and could never have been granted one. By the standards of their people, she was as far from a lady as she could get.  
  
Michael had always called her Lady Amanda regardless.  
  
“Oh,” Jim said quietly, looking at the book with newfound reverence. Their last connection to the woman who had apparently raised them both, the slave who had taken two captive children under her wing and decided to nurture them.  
  
“What’s the other book?” he asked. The title was something in Vulcan.  
  
“The Teachings of Surak,” Spock said. “He is a rather controversial philosopher who has made something of a name for himself as of late.”  
  
“I wouldn’t have figured Vulcans would have much of a taste for philosophy.”  
  
“They do not.”  
  
Jim grinned. “So you guys are sort of rebels by your planet’s standards?”  
  
“Not ‘sort of.’ Teaching slaves to read is an offense punishable by fifty lashes with a heated whip. Sybok risked much to give us that book, and Lady Amanda risked even more to teach us how to read,” Michael said.  
  
“Oh.” Well then. That was a depressingly scary thought. Jim couldn’t even imagine a world where reading bedtime stories could get you whipped, and yet these people had lived on one. And survived.  
  
He was starting to realize that there was a whole lot more to slavery than it just being work you do for free.

* * *

“This is the rec room. And hey, these are my friends!”  
  
Jim led Spock over to a table where Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, and Bones were playing poker and drinking scotch. He regretted that he couldn’t give Michael a tour of the ship too. But he would have to settle for showing Spock around and knowing that he would relate everything he found interesting to her.  
  
“So, you’re the man who married our favorite science officer,” Scotty said, leaning back and giving Spock a once-over.  
  
“Indeed,” he said.  
  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Uhura smiled. “My name is Nyota.”  
  
“I am Spock, kafeh t…” He trailed off.  
  
His name had changed.  
  
“Of the clan of S’chn T’Gai,” he finished.  
  
“And this is Scotty, Sulu, and you already know Bones,” Jim said, pointing to each of his friends in turn.  
  
“Nice to meet you.”  
  
“Aye.”  
  
“So how are you liking the Enterprise so far, Spock?” Bones asked. “Jim giving you any trouble?”  
  
“Hey!” he protested.  
  
“As I have only been aboard the Enterprise 1.27 Terran hours, I have yet to make any conclusions about it as a whole. The zh—Jim, has not inconvenienced me in any way. He has proven most helpful.”  
  
“Well, I’ll be,” Bones said. “Our resident playboy is actually a decent husband.”  
  
Scotty snorted. “It’s been one hour.”  
  
“Hey! I can behave. I’m gonna be a captain one day, you know. And that requires discipline.”  
  
“Which you have, I assume,” Sulu said.  
  
“Oh yeah, tons.”  
  
“I am afraid I do not understand,” Spock said, confused.  
  
“They’re just making jokes because Jim likes to sleep around a bit,” Uhura said.  
  
“Wow. Y tu, Brute?” he asked.  
  
“Sleep around?” Spock asked.  
  
“Oh, um. You know. Have casual sex.”  
  
“Oh.” His face felt like it was burning slightly. What exactly would his husband expect from him in this marriage? He had stated that he had no intention to use Spock as a bedslave, and had even freed him and everything, but Spock assumed there were still certain… expectations. One did not do all of this for nothing.  
  
But suppose that Jim did. Suppose he was just that good a person. What then? Would he still be ‘sleeping with’ a string of casual lovers?  
  
A wave of possessiveness washed over him, and he tamped down on it immediately. Jim was not his. He could do what he wanted, and Spock would be fine with it. He would.

* * *

“And this is the observation deck,” Jim said. “It’s my favorite room on the whole ship. Sometimes I just come up here and watch the stars whiz by for hours.”  
  
Spock approached the viewing window and gazed out through it in reverence. They were still in orbit around Vulcan, doing final checks and plotting out their next course and mission. The planet was a dusty red ball with few swatches of other colors on it. Sparkling cities could be seen on its surface. Other ships and satellites were streaks of light running around it.  
  
With a lurch, the ship went into warp.  
  
Vulcan disappeared in a red blur until it was a pinprick, until it was invisible. Stars flashed and streaked across the viewscreen as fast as meteors. Space was deafening, massive, infinite around them.  
  
Spock was wonderstruck.  
  
Jim couldn’t tear his eyes away from him, the sheer awe on the other man’s face making his heart fill up with a warm little bubble of pride and happiness. He had done that. He had put that look on Spock’s face.  
  
He would give him the galaxy if it meant that he could do that again.  
  
Spock turned to him. “Jim, I… I don’t know how to thank you. You have done so much for me, given me so much. I never expected—any of this. I thank you.”  
  
His lips quirked. “It was nothing.”  
  
“No,” Spock said. “It was not.”  
  
Jim had to look away before he did something stupid. Because _god_ , he wanted to kiss him. But that was exactly what Spock had been told to expect from him, exactly what he feared. So no. He wasn’t going to do a damn thing that Spock didn’t initiate, that he wasn’t absolutely sure the other man wanted.  
  
Spock heard his thought process and looked at the commander with yet another wash of wonder.  
  
Humans were strange, he decided. But not unpleasantly so.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bath’pa = damn

Michael and Spock shared their bed that night, as they had when they were children. It, however, was not in any way similar to the Terran euphemism of ‘sleeping with’ someone. The cold and dingy slaves’ quarters had made sharing body heat a necessity, and almost every night for the first five years of Spock’s life and the first eleven of Michael’s, they had slept curled up one on each side of Amanda, who hugged them close as if trying to protect them from the world they were in, as if letting go would make the kids vanish into thin air.  
  
She wasn’t there every night. There were some when Sarek would keep her in his chambers. Usually, though, he would send her away as soon as her duties were completed.  
  
It had always seemed so much colder once she was gone.  
  
Thanks to that practice and the communal nature of the slaves’ quarters, Spock had never slept alone in his life. He wasn’t sure he would be able to. He was immeasurably grateful for Michael’s presence—the one remaining constant in his life that had changed so greatly.  
  
They rose at precisely 0430 hours, as they did every morning to begin their duties. Only there were no duties to begin.  
  
Michael began fiddling with the replicator, trying to get it to produce food. All the dishes programmed into it had strange, foreign names. Earth names. She had no clue what any of them would be, if any of them were even meant to be consumed for breakfast.  
  
She supposed that she was technically from Earth, even if she had no memories of it, and she was going back to Earth to live out the rest of her life there. She was going to have to get used to Earth food.  
  
She chose a dish at random and tried to figure out how she was supposed to eat a taco with a fork. Vulcans do not touch food with their hands, to do so is anathema, the thought never even occurred to her. She ended up scooping out the taco’s insides with a spoon.  
  
It had a lot more flavors than a typical Vulcan meal would have. She found it surprising, but not… bad.  
  
Spock, on the other hand, was managing pretty well with a bowl of vanilla ice cream.  
  
“What are you going to do today?” she asked him.  
  
“I do not know,” he said. He had no work to do. He had never before had a free day all to himself, not since he was too young to remember. He had no clue what to do with it.  
  
“I think I shall read,” she said. “I cannot leave this room, after all. And it would be beneficial to practice my Standard. I have not spoken the language since Amanda passed.”  
  
“Indeed,” Spock said. He was in the same situation. However, having not spoken the language since he was only five, ‘rusty’ didn’t begin to cover it. Standard had been a seldom-used second language to him at best as a toddler, and now it had completely slipped his mind. Jim had given both he and Michael universal translators when they arrived on the ship, but as Michael had said, it would be best to start re-learning the language in earnest and wean themselves off the technology as soon as possible. Spock may not be going to Earth, but he was living on a human-run ship.  
  
Despite the logic in the arrangement, he found the idea of staying cooped up in one room all day abhorrent. He had just escaped slavery and was now flying free throughout the stars, and he was going to spend his time in one confined space? No. Never.  
  
“I believe I will make a vidcall to Sybok and then go explore the ship some more,” he said apologetically. Michael didn’t have the option of leaving this room.  
  
Though soon she would have a whole planet to explore.  
  
“Ah, of course,” she said. “I would like to talk to Sybok as well.”  
  
“Very well.”  
  
They pulled up an additional chair to the computer terminal and began following the set of steps Jim had left listed on a datapadd for them. Soon they had the connection up and active. Sybok answered instantly.  
  
“Spock! Michael! It is good to see you. How is the starship?” he asked.  
  
“Better than we could have ever expected, Sybok. James has been very pleasant to us and accommodating. We even have our own room,” Michael said.  
  
“Though Michael is not allowed to leave it,” Spock added.  
  
“What? Why not?”  
  
“I am an illegal stowaway on the ship. As long as we are still in Vulcan space, the law dictates that I be returned to my master at once upon discovery. James says it should be fine once we reach the starbase, however. He believes I can be granted asylum on Earth as a refugee.”  
  
“How has Sarek reacted to her disappearance?” Spock asked.  
  
“Oh, he’s spitting mad. I think he’s figured out that Kirk stole you away. He lost both his humans in one fell swoop, how do you think he reacted? He’s issued a reward of 12,000 units for anyone who can return to him his runaway slave. Alive.”  
  
“Bath’pa,” Michael hissed. “He put a bounty on me?”  
  
“Indeed,” Sybok said solemnly. “What are you going to do? It was issued with your full name and description, all your bio stats and everything.”  
  
She thought for a moment. “I shall take a new name and change my appearance. Or go somewhere where no one can remove me. A place of absolute safety.”  
  
“Like where?” Spock asked.  
  
“I do not know. I will think of something,” she said. “Let us move on to other topics. How are things at home?”  
  
“The slaves are talking,” Sybok grinned. “They’re talking about equality, about how you proved it’s possible for a slave. That guy Surak—his teachings are spreading like wildfire among the lower classes. If you ask me, some of his ideas are a bit too out there, especially all that stuff about no emotions, but he’s become something of a leader. A figurehead. The people are looking to him.”  
  
“Do you think the slaves will revolt?” Spock asked.  
  
“Oh, definitely. The Council couldn’t stop it now if they tried. They’ll be lucky if outright war doesn’t break out. Surak is becoming popular even in the neighboring kingdoms. This… this idea of reform—it goes beyond the borders of Kir.”

* * *

Spock wandered the ship aimlessly, soaking it all in. He could go anywhere. He could do anything. He could say anything. The universe was at his feet, and he was free.  
  
It was overwhelming.  
  
He ended up in arboretum, examining plants the likes of which he had never seen before. They were beautiful, astounding, so very different. Alien. Things like this could never grow on Vulcan. There were specimens from seemingly all over the galaxy, some from even beyond the borders of the Federation.  
  
He saw three species of Vulcan cacti that had been collected by the researchers during their stay. They had several botanists hovering over them and murmuring about water storage. Spock gave them a wide berth.  
  
“Beautiful, ain’t it?” a female voice asked him. He whirled around to be confronted with a red-haired Orion woman.  
  
“Indeed,” he said. He had been examining a large tree covered in more green than he had thought possible and dripping with vines.  
  
“That’s from my homeworld. I grew up in a jungle filled with trees like that,” she said.  
  
“It must have been quite a shock to you to transfer to so different an environment.”  
  
“The same to you,” she said. “You’re that slave we picked up from Vulcan, right?”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“I was a slave too,” she confessed. “A lodubyaln. The T’Prar Foundation freed me.”  
  
“I grieve with thee,” Spock said.  
  
“I’m alright now. They taught me how to read and everything. Got me training, got me a job. It gets better, you know. You get better.”  
  
“Does this T’Prar Foundation work with displaced slaves of any culture?” he asked, thinking of Michael.  
  
“No, sorry. They’re a special organization for Orions. Orion slave girls,” she said.  
  
“Ah.”  
  
“If you ever need any help with anything, you can always come to me and ask. I know it can be embarrassing sometimes, not even knowing the basics. If you need help practicing Standard, or working the computers, or… anything, just know that you can come to me.”  
  
“That is most appreciated,” he said genuinely. “I would be most grateful for assistance in speaking Standard.”  
  
She smiled brightly. “Great! I have some free time now, if that works for you?”  
  
“It does.”  
  
“I’m Gaila, by the way.”  
  
“Spock.”

* * *

“Sir, we’re being hailed from Rigel VII,” Uhura said.  
  
“Put it on screen,” Pike said.  
  
The viewscreen crackled to life and it showed a staticky image of the interior of the High Authority’s palace. The transmission wavered in and out of focus, sometimes shifting or blacking out for a few seconds.  
  
“… distress… raid on… see them coming… request military assistance—“  
  
The transmission cut out.  
  
“Divert course to Rigel VII immediately. Have security prepare a full squadron to be ready to beam down. Dawkins, begin scanning the planet and surrounding space, try to figure out what’s gone wrong. Uhura, I want you monitoring their news feeds, see if you can get us any more information. And try to restore that lost connection. Kirk, has Dr. Boyce cleared you for active duty yet?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” he said. Though the CMO had made it very clear that Kirk was fit enough for sitting at his science station and playing with equations, not running around on away missions. But Pike didn’t know that.  
  
“Good. We might need a science officer. We have no clue what’s going on down there, and we need to be prepared for everything. Is that clear, people?”  
  
A chorus of “aye, sir”’s answered him.  
  
“Wait! Can I go tell Spock first, so that he knows where I am?” Kirk asked. Sulu snorted, and Pike smiled at him fondly. He felt his face burn. It wasn’t like that. He just didn’t want the guy to worry if he didn’t make it back to the ship that night. If his kahs-wan had taught him anything, it was that Spock had one hell of a protective streak.  
  
“Sure, kid. Go say goodbye to your husband,” Pike said, and Kirk’s face burned even hotter. He rushed off the bridge and went to Spock’s quarters.  
  
“Hey, Michael. Is Spock here?” he asked.  
  
“No. He went out for a bit. Why? Do you need something?”  
  
“Oh, uh, no, I just wanted to tell him—Well, I guess I can just tell you. I’m gonna be going on an away mission to Rigel VII, so I might not be back for a few days. Oh! By the way, we’re diverting to Rigel VII. They sent out a distress signal, so we’re obligated to go check it out. It might take us a bit longer to reach the starbase. Sorry about that.”  
  
“It is not your fault. You have no need to be sorry. Go help the Rigellians, I will forward your message to Spock,” she said kindly.  
  
“Thank you!” he smiled, before limping back off as fast as he could, which admittedly, wasn’t very fast.  
  
Rigel VII was five hours off their course at warp six. It was way out of their way, but they were the closest ship. Or at least, they were the closest ship capable of providing military assistance. The Rigel system wasn’t exactly some backwater; it was a thriving, prosperous place. For them to have to send out a distress signal in itself was disturbing—that they still didn’t know any more than that was even moreso.  
  
Uhura tried hailing the planet continuously for hours, but nobody picked up. Which was bad. The best case scenario was that whatever the emergency was had wiped out their communications capabilities. The worst case scenario was that there was no one left to respond. They had no idea what they were walking into.  
  
Even the news feeds were dead silent, which means that whatever it was hit fast, and it hit everywhere.  
  
Sulu pulled them into geosynchronous orbit above Rigel VII’s capital city and the landing party suited up, strapping on protective vests and phasers. They had a security squadron of twenty, in addition to Pike, Kirk, Navigator Ensign Williams, and Pike’s personal yeoman Drewes, just in case this turned out to be some diplomatic thing.  
  
They stood on the transporter pad and let the light engulf them.


	13. Rigel VII, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s canon that Rigellians are completely unisex and have five genders, so please enjoy this gratuitous use of neopronouns and just picture a bunch of androgynous warriors who could all kill you with a single blow
> 
> Also veridium is a made up precious stone
> 
> Warnings for death and violence

Rigellians were a saber-toothed, reptilian species that generally stood six to seven feet tall. They wore artificial exoskeletons that looked like plated armor, if you didn’t know better. They had thin, wispy hair with beads threaded on it in two traditional strands, and wore thick furs and pelts as clothing, decorated all over with beads. Despite their looks, they were generally very peaceful and intelligent.  
  
But this was not generally.  
  
This was a warzone.  
  
“What do we do, Pike?” Kirk screamed to be heard.  
  
He surveyed the scene. They were on a rocky coastline just south of the majestic fortress that served as the High Authority’s palace. Rigellians clashed and fought all along the beach, using spears and swords like some pre-warp society. An honorable battle tradition, no doubt.  
  
Some were charging the palace and others were defending it. The situation was clear. This was a coup.  
  
“Phasers on stun! Defend that castle!” Pike called out. The landing party moved out in battle formation.  
  
In the end, phasers will beat a spear any day, no matter how skilled the warrior is. The battle lasted only half an hour longer after they arrived. They were soon standing on a shore strewn with unconscious Rigellian bodies.  
  
The leader of the defensive side approached Pike. “Your assistance is most appreciated!” xe said enthusiastically.  
  
“We received a distress call from the High Authority asking us to come down. What happened?” he asked, panting.  
  
“If you will accompany us to the palace, all will be explained,” xe said.  
  
They accompanied them to the palace. The Rigellians were chattering around them amiably, high on victory and adrenaline, all wide smiles and thank you’s. They were almost inconceivably grateful, and promised a massive feast would be held in their honor.  
  
“Oh Most High One, these newcomers from the starship Enterprise assisted us in battle!” the leader said exuberantly the second they crossed the drawbridge. “It was very wise of you to request their aid.”  
  
The Rigellian xe was speaking to blinked with all three eyelids. “But of course! We are most grateful for your help, Captain. We are forever indebted to you and your crew.”  
  
Pike smiled wanly. “We were happy to help.”  
  
“It has been suggested that a feast be held to honor our valiant saviors,” xe said, not at all subtly.  
  
“And a feast they shall have,” the High Authority agreed. “You must be exhausted, dear guests, let us put you up in rooms while the arrangements are made.”

* * *

Three hours later, they were escorted to a resplendent banquet hall, grander even than the one on Vulcan. The cutlery was made of cut veridium that gleamed emerald in the light. The table itself was coated in lacing golden gilt and made of rich mahogany, or some Rigellian equivalent. The hall was lit with a thousand candles in floating crystal orbs that cast rainbows all around. It looked like something out of a fairy tale.  
  
They were served Romulan ale and the steak of some native creature.  
  
“So, Your Peaceableness, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly caused that skirmish down on the shore?” Pike asked, digging into his meal.  
  
“Oh, the people are merely revolting. It is nothing to be concerned about.”  
  
“Really? Now, to me, a potential revolution sounds like a pretty big deal.”  
  
Ey waved it off. “It has passed.”  
  
“Are you sure? Because we can provide further aid. The Federation takes attempts to overthrow the government very seriously.”  
  
“You misunderstand.” Eir teeth glittered dangerously. “The revolution was successful.”  
  
Jim’s blood ran cold.  
  
A sword was at his throat in an instant. The other guests were swiftly put in similar situations.  
  
“We do thank you most sincerely for your help in the overthrow. For a while there, it looked like they might reclaim the castle,” ey said. “Put them with the others.”

* * *

They were escorted at swordpoint into the dungeons. Their phasers, vests, and communicators were all confiscated. And then they were shoved into cells.  
  
“This sucks,” Jim said.  
  
“You’re telling me,” Yeoman Drewes said. He ran a hand through his cropped short hair.  
  
“Why are you humans in here? Why are you even on our planet?” one of their Rigellian cellmates asked.  
  
“The High Authority sent out a distress call. We answered it,” Drewes said. “Ended up helping out the wrong side and getting betrayed.”  
  
“You helped them overthrow my government?” another asked, indignant.  
  
“ _Your_ government?” Jim asked.  
  
“I am the High Authority,” ze said.  
  
“We promise to reinstall you as the rightful leader as soon as we can,” Pike said diplomatically. “In the meantime, can you explain what happened? Why are the people revolting in the first place? What happened?”  
  
Ze sighed. “They are the Gavooni, an isolationist faction with a penchant for violence. They wish to withdraw the Rigel system from the Federation to return it to its former glory. They believe outside influences have tainted our culture and made it impure. They wish to undo this and eliminate all things foreign from Rigel VII, by force if necessary.”  
  
“Great. Fascist turtle people. That’s just wonderful,” Kirk said.  
  
“We’re going to fix this,” Pike said.  
  
Just then, a guard walked into the dungeon and unlocked the cell door. Shi looked straight at the High Authority, face grim and set in stone. “You will come with me,” shi said.  
  
“I will not,” ze said.  
  
Shi raised a blade to the throat of another prisoner, who stood immobilized. “You will come with me or this one will be killed.”  
  
The High Authority stood up slowly. The guard drew hir blade to point it at zir back to prod zir along. They left the dungeon and for ten minutes all that could be heard was the soft murmuring of indistinct voices. There was a scream, a thud, then silence.  
  
The High Authority’s head rolled through the open door.

* * *

Number One leaned back in the captain’s chair and checked the chronometer. The landing party was now officially ten minutes late for their scheduled check-in. Which didn’t make sense—last she’d heard, everything had been settled and they were being treated to a feast to celebrate the big victory.  
  
She had to assume the rebels had attacked again.  
  
“Lieutenant Smith, take the science station. Is there any way you can pinpoint human bio signs down there?” she asked.  
  
Smith did as ordered and examined the equipment. “No, ma’am. It’s all the veridium. It interferes with our scanning abilities. In order for it to be at that high of concentration, they’d have to either be in a mine or still in the castle, and I’d put my money on the castle, but we can’t get their location precise enough for beam up.”  
  
She nodded. Just as she’d thought. Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to do an extraction.  
  
It was time to send in the cavalry.

* * *

The security team moved out, phasers drawn. They swam through the moat and blasted their way past the gates with phasers on full power.  
  
And then they stormed the palace.  
  
The Rigellians were on them in an instant, recovering from the surprise attack remarkably fast. They had blades drawn and shields out faster than the humans could blink. Their exoskeletons provided conducive armor against phaser blasts. Like water off a duck’s back. The humans learned to aim around them.  
  
Had it been hand-to-hand combat with both sides using the same primitive weapons, the humans would have lost by a long shot. As it was, they were making sufficient headway, pushing their way into the castle, past layer after layer of defenses and rushing Rigellians.  
  
They rounded up the Rigellians into one room with multiple phasers trained on them and ransacked the castle, tearing it upside down in their search.  
  
They tore through the palace until they came to the dungeon. The squad leader phased the door away. Humans and Rigellian prisoners began pouring out, the Rigellians pausing to gush their thanks of a thousand hearts.  
  
A loud scream and the sound of commotion rang down from upstairs. Footsteps pounded above their heads, down the stairs.  
  
“Go! Now! Run!” Pike pushed people along, shoving them up the stairs as Rigellian warriors came rushing down. People were skewered on the stairsteps, ran through with swords, left lacerated and bleeding on the floor. They kept running.  
  
They burst out of the castle through the destroyed drawbridge and began swimming their way back across the moat.  
  
Jim faltered at the edge of it.  
  
There was no way he was capable of swimming that. He was barely keeping up with the group as is, and he’d had way too many close calls on those stairs. If he got in the water, his prosthetic would be a dead weight dragging him down.  
  
He couldn’t take it off and swim with one leg either, though.  
  
Could he?  
  
Did he have much of a choice?  
  
Drewes ran up from behind him and put a supportive arm around him. “Come on!”  
  
With that, they plunged into the water. It was churning with the motion of soldiers and cold enough to be almost freezing.  
  
They were just reaching the other bank when a spear whizzed through the air and punctured its mark with the sickening sound of tearing flesh and wood scraping bone. Drewes collapsed face-first in the water just a foot away from the shore. Blood-filled water swirled around them and lapped at Jim’s clothes. He dragged himself onto the ground and pushed up, sprinting, or as close to it as he could get.  
  
Humans were disappearing one by one in beams of upraised light as they cleared the castle grounds. Jim kept running, breathless, hoping and praying the transporter would take him soon.  
  
A Rigellian caught him by the arm and yanked him around, snapping veridium handcuffs on his wrists. Ne smiled maliciously. And dragged him off toward a cove.

* * *

“Transporter room, report. Are all the crewmen beamed aboard?” Una asked, pressing a button on the captain’s chair.  
  
“No, ma’am. Five are still missing. We can’t locate their lifesigns anymore.”  
  
“Which five?”  
  
“The captain, Commander Kirk, Yeoman Drewes, Ensign Benavidez and Ensign X’Cal.”  
  
Number One closed her eyes. For a moment. She would mourn later, for now, she had to be the captain and run the ship. “Do you have their last known locations?”  
  
“For all except the captain, ma’am. It’s possible he was still within the castle.”  
  
“Alright. Beam up whatever is in those locations,” she said.  
  
The transporter crew complied. Shimmering gold dumped three bodies on the floor, and… nothing from the fourth beaming location. They frowned and tried again. Still nothing.  
  
“Ma’am, it appears we have a problem. We can’t find Kirk’s body. It’s just not there.”  
  
“What do you mean, it isn’t there? Are you sayin’ he moved after he was already dead?”  
  
The ensign faltered. “I don’t know what happened, ma’am, I just know that he isn’t where his last recorded bio sign was.”  
  
Una grimaced. Of all the horrible things. They wouldn’t even have a body to send back to his parents. Kirk had been so young too, with so much ahead of him.  
  
“Smith, begin visual scans of the coast down there. I want to find that body. The boy deserves a proper burial.”  
  
It was a shame they couldn’t do the same for the captain.

* * *

Pike awoke on the cold dungeon stairs, bleeding and impaled through the side. The spear had definitely gone through one of his vital organs, likely his liver. He was cold and flushed and sweating. It wouldn’t be long now.  
  
He had gotten his crew to safety and that was all that mattered.  
  
A Rigellian saw that he had awakened and smiled down at him. “Good. We had worried you were dead. Then we would have lost our biggest bargaining chip,” ey said. “Heal him.”  
  
Two healers came forward with a dermal regenerator and a suture kit in hand. Pike was confused at first, because why would you need to suture anything if you had a dermal regenerator?  
  
But then they healed his liver and muscle tissue and patched the skin up by hand without any anesthesia and he began to understand.

* * *

Kirk was dragged into a cave just off the coast and through a series of tunnels that he realized were manmade. Finally, his captor stopped in a large cavern crisscrossed with rails and littered with pickaxes.  
  
A veridium mine.  
  
The Rigellian who had caught him was seven feet tall and covered with huge muscles. Ne had some scars here and there from battles past. A warrior, an experienced one. Rare for a Rigellian.  
  
They were a peaceful, advanced society 99% of the time.  
  
Kirk accepted that there was no way he was getting out of this on his own.  
  
After a half an hour of painfully strained silence, Pike was dragged in by five Rigellians who seemed awfully proud of themselves.  
  
Jim’s heart almost leapt for joy because it Pike, everything would be okay now, they were going to get out of this just fine, but then he saw the guy’s condition. His skin was sallow and pale, he was only half-conscious, his head lolling. A huge dark stain covered the side of his uniform and dripped all the way down to his pants. He was clutching at his side as much as he could, half doubled over in pain.  
  
Jim’s heart sank.  
  
“Did you send the message?” the one who had captured him asked.  
  
“Yes. I put it on a time delay, to give us time to get here. In one hour, they will be informed that Rigel VII is under new government now and is withdrawing from the Federation. Should they fail to recognize us, then we will inform them of our hostages and begin making use of them.”


	14. Rigel VII, Part 2

Una knocked lightly on the door to Spock’s quarters and took a steadying breath. She had never had to do this before. Serving on a starship loaned toward a solitary lifestyle, and while Starfleet made an effort not to split up married couples or family members, there weren’t that many serving together to split up in the first place.  
  
She had never had to do this before and she hoped she would never have to again.  
  
There was the sound of some shuffling and then the door opened. She stepped through immediately.  
  
“Mr. Spock. I need to speak with you. Would you like to sit down?”  
  
Spock arched an eyebrow curiously but took her advice. She took the seat opposite him at the small table.  
  
She took another deep breath.  
  
“James Kirk is dead.”  
  
He didn’t react at all. His face remained a stone wall of impassivity and he didn’t move a muscle.  
  
“He died in the line of duty, defending Rigel VII. Towards the end of the battle, his bio signs cut out. We were unable to retrieve the body. I’m so sorry,” she said. She swallowed. “I’m sorry for your loss.”  
  
Spock didn’t so much as blink. He barely even breathed.  
  
“That is not true,” he said, in as steady a voice as he could manage.  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“That is not true,” he repeated. “Jim is still alive.”  
  
Her eyes softened. “Spock. I’m sorry, but no, he isn’t.”  
  
“You are lying,” he said. He was just slightly shaking now, not even noticeable unless you were paying attention, and Una was. She put a hand on his arm gently.  
  
“I know this can be hard to accept. You weren’t the only one who lost someone on that mission. My husband, the captain… he died too. I know what you’re going through. And I know that it hurts, but you have to accept the facts. Jim Kirk is dead.”  
  
“He is not,” Spock said firmly.  
  
“If you need, I can arrange a meeting with the ship’s counselor—“  
  
“Jim is not dead.”  
  
She looked at him with pity in her eyes. “What makes you think that?”  
  
“I can still feel our bond.”  
  
That gave her pause. “What do you mean?”  
  
“The bond between us is still active. Jim is alive at the other end of it. I can sense his presence in my mind.”  
  
Una didn’t know anything about Vulcan mysticism. For all she knew, Spock could be imagining it as a defense mechanism. But on the other hand, if there was even a small chance he wasn’t…  
  
“Can you read his thoughts?” she asked sharply.  
  
“With effort, yes.”  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
Spock closed his eyes and probed at the bond in the back of his mind. _Fear. Tired. Scared. Pike. Dark. Pike. Stay awake. Rigellians. Wake up, Pike_. “I cannot tell. He is not actively thinking about it.” He hesitated, unsure how best to state this. He decided to be direct. “Your husband lives as well. He is with him.”  
  
Una’s gaze seared straight through him. He could be wrong. He could be lying to manipulate her. Vulcans had practically just been contacted by the Federation; nobody knew a damn thing about them. She didn’t a thing about this one in particular either, except that he was married to her Chief Science Officer and he was determined to get him back.  
  
He could so easily be lying. She had no reason to trust him.  
  
Except for the sincerity in his eyes and the conviction in his voice and the ever-reliable gut instinct that had gotten her through life so far.  
  
“How do we find them?”

* * *

Uhura ran into the transporter room just as the two of them taking their places on the pads. “Wait! Commander Pike, we’ve received a transmission from the Gavooni, and it’s urgent.”  
  
“More urgent than rescuing the captain?” she asked impatiently.  
  
“It has to do with that.”  
  
Una paused. Then, nodding, she got off the transporter pad, Spock following close behind. Uhura led them to the briefing room and queued up the transmission.  
  
The screen showed the interior of the High Authority’s throne room, with some Rigellian who definitely did not belong there sitting on the throne and smirking, surrounded by xir compatriots.  
  
“Greetings, Earthlings,” xe said. “I am Havondaf Schmoi Garloo D’Dondti, the new High Authority of Rigel VII. I am sure you received the holovid of what happened to the last High Authority. As it is now within my power, I am hereby withdrawing Rigel VII from the United Federation of Planets!”  
  
The crowd cheered and applauded.  
  
Xe flicked xir strands of beaded hair over xir shoulders. “You must recognize the Gavooni as the new rightful leadership of this planet. You have two hours to comply, or else.”  
  
The transmission cut out.  
  
“What do we do?” Uhura asked.  
  
“Send the message to the Federation Council and inform them of the coup.”  
  
“There’s no way they’ll comply. The message probably won’t even reach them in time.”  
  
“I know. The Federation does not negotiate with terrorists. But we have to follow protocol,” Una said. “We wait until the two hours are up. We watch their next video. And then we storm that palace with every man we’ve got.”

* * *

The two hours ticked by at a snail’s pace. The tension on the bridge was thick enough to cut with a knife. Una asked if any new transmissions had come in every five minutes. Her knuckles were white gripping the arms of the captain’s chair.  
  
She allowed Spock to stay on the bridge. Were their situations reversed, she would want to be there.  
  
They couldn’t afford to move out until they knew what threat the Gavooni had that they thought was good enough to hold over the entire Federation. This was a delicate situation. This was chess. They didn’t dare make any moves until they understood what all the players could do, what the repercussions could be.  
  
“I’m getting a transmission!” Uhura called.  
  
“On screen,” Number One snapped.  
  
The feed was of the bottom of a mine this time. It was dimly lit by an oil lantern, casting long, dark shadows. In the center of the cavern sat Pike and Kirk, tied up very thoroughly with rope and wearing veridium handcuffs, just in case the mine around them hadn’t been sufficient enough shielding. Six Rigellians circled around the outskirts threateningly.  
  
“Trace that location. Where’s this coming from?” Number One asked.  
  
“Uhh… The castle! It’s being broadcast from the castle,” Uhura said. “This isn’t live. It’s on a ten minute relay. Everything we’re seeing here already happened.”  
  
So whatever place they were at was within ten minutes of the castle. But with beaming technology, that could mean anything.  
  
Pike’s shirt was obviously bloodstained even under all the rope and Una’s breath caught in her throat. He was kicked in the side, right where the stain was darkest, and he let out a pained cry. Una’s fingers were in a death grip on the captain’s chair, the metal digging into her skin painfully.  
  
And then they tortured him.  
  
They threw in a little bit for Kirk, too. But they knew who the captain was, and they knew his crew was watching.  
  
They promised another video would be sent in an hour and every hour after that until their demands were met.  
  
What they didn’t count on was his wife.  
  
The video clicked off and the bridge was icy silent. Una stood up.  
  
“Spock,” she said. “You better hope to the holy hell that you’re right about this.”  
  
He nodded.

* * *

They beamed down to the planet’s surface armed to the teeth and surrounded by a veritable platoon of security officers. Una nodded to Spock, who closed his eyes.  
  
He paused. Centered himself. Reached out with his mind and tugged on the bond.  
  
There.  
  
He turned slightly and took a hesitant step forward, pulling along the bond like it was a lifeline. Jim’s lifeline.  
  
He began moving, slowly, carefully, letting Jim’s mind guide him, being drawn closer to his bondmate’s presence. He wasn’t aware of anything else. The outside world faded into the background. There was only the bond, and Jim, and Spock, and the closing distance between them.  
  
He wasn’t aware of how much time passed. He wasn’t aware of where he was or where he was going or the change in the air around him. He didn’t hear the carefully measured footsteps of the landing party around him. He didn’t hear the sounds of battle and phaser fire. He didn’t hear the sound of Rigellian bodies hitting the floor.  
  
Jim.  
  
He opened his eyes.  
  
He began working at the ropes to free his husband, who was looking up at him in shock and wonder. He removed the gag carefully.  
  
“How did you find me?” Jim asked instantly.  
  
“Our bond,” Spock replied. “I was able to sense your presence through it and use that to guide the landing party to your location.”  
  
“Wow, we can do that?”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
Spock took the chain linking the veridium cuffs in his hands and snapped it in two with one fluid motion. Jim’s eyes bulged. He set to work on freeing Pike, who was half-conscious and bloody.  
  
They were carried out of the mine with haste and as soon as they were out, Una commed Scotty to beam them up.

* * *

“Well, you’re both pretty beat up,” Boyce said. “I used a dermal regenerator and a bone knitter to patch you up, but I still recommend three day’s bed rest and a long, cold drink once you’re done with that.”  
  
“Don’t say stuff like that. You’re gonna corrupt your assistant,” Pike said weakly, nodding to Bones standing at Boyce’s side.  
  
“Eh, the damage is done. You’re gonna have a second me runnin’ around this before too long,” Boyce clapped him on the shoulder, and McCoy smiled smugly.  
  
“I will inform your husband of your recovery. I’m sure he’d like to see you,” Una said, excusing herself. She marched sedately to Spock’s quarters and entered her override, sure he would want to be informed as soon as possible.  
  
He was sitting on the floor playing cards with a human woman. A human woman who was definitely not Starfleet. Who was wearing raggedy Vulcan slave’s clothes. Who gasped and scrambled under the bed as soon as she saw her.  
  
Una swore.


	15. Moving On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of Chris and Boyce's conveersation comes from the TOS pilot episode The Cage.
> 
> Ko-kai t'nash-veh = my sister

“Chris, we have a problem,” Una said, positively storming into sickbay. “Your Chief Science Officer here,” she jerked her head at Jim, “smuggled a stowaway on board before we left Vulcan.” 

“What.” Chris asked, and then both the Pikes were staring at him and Jim sort of wished he could turn invisible. 

“Um, I can explain,” he said. 

“You’d better,” Chris said. 

“Okay, so Michael is Spock’s sister—“

“She’s a human, Jim, you aren’t gonna be able to pull that one,” Una said. 

“No really! Like, obviously they aren’t related by blood, but they’re family anyway, they grew up together, they had the same mom. Or woman who raised them. Genes aren’t everything,” he insisted. 

“Why is she on board, Jim?” Chris asked dangerously. 

“She was a slave! I couldn’t just leave her!” 

“So, let me get this straight,” Una said. “You  _stole_  a slave from the Vulcan ambassador to the Federation, you smuggled her on board, you hid her in your slave-husband’s quarters, and then your plan was to do what exactly? Just hide her here indefinitely? Did you think we wouldn’t notice?” 

“No! I mean, not until we got to the starbase, anyway. I was gonna let her off there and get her situated on a transport straight to Earth where she could apply for refugee status.” 

The Pikes looked at each other, seeming to have a silent conversation, even though they weren’t technically the couple with the telepathic link here. 

“Alright,” Chris sighed. “We’re gonna have to talk this over. Don’t think you’re off the hook here, you broke a ton of rules with this one, Jim. You’re confined to your quarters until further notice. Dismissed.” 

“Yes, sir.” He slid into the wheelchair by his biobed and quickly wheeled himself out of there, hoping that would be all there was to his punishment. Pike was a reasonable guy, and he was a big softie when it came right down to it—especially when it came to Jim, who he treated practically like a son. 

Jim wheeled into his quarters, and Spock and Michael immediately pounced on him with a thousand frantic questions and explanations. 

“She just came in without any warning—“ 

“Our sincerest apologies, Commander—“ 

“Did they say what’s going to happen—“ 

“Are you in any trou—“ 

“Guys, guys, relax, it’s alright,” Jim cut them off. “You didn’t get me in trouble. You didn’t do any of this, it was all my idea. I’m just confined to my quarters for now, but I figured I’d stop in and tell you what’s going on first. The Pikes haven’t decided what to do yet. They’re talking it over.” 

Silence reigned.  

“I’m gonna go to my quarters now. You guys are welcome to visit me anytime you like. I guess hiding is pointless now. Sorry about that, Michael.” 

* * *

 

“What’s that?” Chris asked when Boyce got out an old leather case of something. “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with me.” 

Boyce ignored him, opening the case and fiddling with something inside. “I know.” 

“We’ve decided to divert to the Vega colony and replace anybody who needs long-term hospitalization. And also—“ 

Ice clinked on glass. 

“What the devil are you putting in there? Ice?” 

“Who wants a warm martini?” Boyce asked, handing him a glass of something definitely not medicinal. 

“What makes you think I need one?” Chris asked. 

“Sometimes a man will tell his bartender things he’ll never tell his doctor.” He raised his own glass and took a seat. “What’s been on your mind, Chris? The fight on Rigel VII?” 

“Shouldn’t it be? My only yeoman and two others dead, seven injured.” 

“Was there anything you personally could have done to prevent it?” 

“Oh, I should have smelled trouble when I saw the swords and the armor. Instead of that, I let myself get trapped in that deserted fortress and attacked by one of their warriors.” 

“Chris, you set standards for yourself no one could meet. You treat everyone on board like a human being except for yourself. And now you’re tired, and you—“ 

“You bet I’m tired,” Chris snapped. “You bet. I’m tired of being responsible for 430 lives. I’m tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn’t, and who’s going on the landing party and who doesn’t, and who lives and… who dies. I’ve had it, Phil.” 

“To the point of finally taking my advice, a rest leave?” 

“To the point of considering resigning.” 

“And do what?” 

“Well, for one thing, go home,” he said, shifting. “Nice little town with fifty miles of parkland around it. Remember I told you I had two horses? Used to take dome food and ride out all day.” 

“Ah, that sounds exciting. Ride out with a picnic lunch every day.” Boyce took a drink. 

“I said that’s one place I might go. Or I’d go into business on Regulus or on the Orion colony.” 

“You, an Orion trader, dealing in green animal women, slaves?” Boyce’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling. 

“That’s not what I meant! The point is that this isn’t the only life available. There’s a whole galaxy of things to choose from.” 

“Not for you,” Phil said emphatically. “A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head on and beats it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.” 

“Now you’re beginning to talk like a doctor, bartender.” 

“Take your choice. We both get the same two kinds of customers—the living and the dying.” 

“Yeah? Which am I, Phil?” 

“That’s up to you,” he took a sip. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, considering. 

“I have some news,” Boyce said eventually. “You aren’t going to like it.” 

“What is it?” Chris asked, dread sinking in his gut. 

“I’m retiring,” he said. “It’s about time. I’m sixty-seven years old, Chris. I want to go home and see my grandkids before they’re all grown up.” 

Pike looked at him long and hard. Phil was his best friend on the ship, after his wife. 

“God, Phil. And you expect me to stay on?” 

“I expect you to do what’s best for you, whatever that happens to be. If that means staying in Starfleet, then stay in Starfleet.” 

He shook his head. “I can’t keep doing this, Phil. Being a captain is sucking the life out of me.” 

“So don’t be a captain anymore.” 

“I thought you wanted me to stay in Starfleet.” 

“There is more to Starfleet than just captains and their crews, Captain. Somebody has to be in charge.” 

“What exactly are you suggesting here?”  

“Nothing. I’m just saying. You’d make a mighty fine admiral one day. Maybe that day is closer than you think.” 

* * *

 

“And then I whipped around and shot this other guy right in stomach and he went down like a rock. And then Pike called us off and we went to go have this big celebratory feast at the castle, only that turned out to be a trap, and they threw us all in the dungeon, and the High Authority was there, and they chopped off his head.” 

“We were aware of that aspect of your adventure. It was broadcasted,” Spock said. 

“Wow, that’s fucked up. Anyway, then there was a lot of waiting around, ‘cause, y’know, we were trapped in the dungeon, but then the other Pike sent in a whole goddamned army and blew the place to bits to rescue her husband. And the rest of us. But mostly her husband. 

“And we were running away—but very professionally, and with manly courage, so it’s called a retreat—and Scotty was beaming us up as fast as he could lock on to our locations, but then! This huge Rigellian came up to me and snapped veridium cuffs on my wrists! And dragged me off into this creepy cave mine thing! 

“And then Pike was there! And then, y’know… you guys saw the rest.” 

“Do you require rest?” Michael asked. 

“Nah, I’m good. I like talking to you guys.” 

“It is a pleasure talking to you as well,” Spock said. 

“I would like to have similar adventures,” Michael said. 

Jim’s eyebrows shot up. “You sure about that? Because the part at the end was not fun.” 

“Aside from that,” she said. “You get to travel the stars and rescue people and discover new worlds. I would like to do that as well.” 

“You wanna enlist in Starfleet?” Jim asked, excited. 

“Yes. I believe so,” she said, smiling slightly. 

“That’s so cool! Hey, once you’re done at the Academy, maybe you can request to be assigned to the Enterprise! Then we could serve together!” 

“You think the officials would allow that?” 

“Hell yeah! You’re awesome enough for the flagship,” he said with total confidence. 

“Alright,” she stood up, smiling brighter now. “As soon as possible, I shall enlist in Starfleet.” 

“Alright!” He held up his hand for a high-five. 

“What are you doing?” 

“It’s called a high-five. You’re supposed to clap your hand to mine,” he said. Both the siblings took on horrified looks, and Jim turned beet red. “Oh, right. I forgot about the… hand thing. Uh, just— _please_  forget I did that. I swear I didn’t mean it like that. High-fives are supposed to be congratulatory. I would  _never_  proposition you in front of your little brother,” he said, realizing as he said it that he was actively making it worse. “I’m gonna stop talking now.” 

“Perhaps we should leave,” Spock said. 

“Perhaps, yeah,” Jim agreed, mortified. 

Just then, a knock sounded at the door, and Jim answered it with a relieved “Come in.” 

The Pikes entered. 

“Good. You’re all together. We wanted to talk to all of you,” Chris said. 

Seeing the looks on their faces, Una added, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad, we just want to tell you what we’ve decided.” 

“Michael wants to enlist in Starfleet,” Jim blurted out before they could speak. “Does that change anything?” 

“Not particularly,” Chris said. “We’re going to be diverting to Vega. We’ll drop you off there with a thousand credits and we’re gonna keep this one off the books. Just don’t tell anyone, alright? It’s just simpler this way.” 

“You should be able to hire transport to Earth and head directly to San Francisco from there. That’s where the Starfleet Academy is located. Once you enlist, your food, board, and clothes will all be taken care of. It’s actually a pretty good plan,” Una said. 

“Good? It’s great! This is amazing!” Jim said. “Thank you guys so much for this, you have no idea what this means.” 

“I cannot take your credits,” Michael said, shaking her head. “I have no way of repaying you, and I won’t have stable employment for years. I can make it to Earth on my own.” 

“Michael, honey, we insist,” Una said. 

She looked at a loss and opened her mouth to protest, but Jim cut her off. “You know, it’s very rude to say ‘no’ after humans insist.”  

She closed her mouth. 

* * *

 

“Jim, did ya hear? Boyce is retiring!” 

“Damn, Bones, I thought you liked the guy.” 

“I do, I didn’t mean it like that and you know it. You know what this means?” 

“No, not really.” 

“It means the position of CMO is now up for grabs,” he said.  

“That’s great!” 

“Hold your horses, it ain’t guaranteed that I’ll be the one who gets it.” 

“Of course you will. You’re the best doctor on the ship.” 

“That M’Benga fella—“ 

“Has only been part of the crew for what, a month? You have tons of seniority.” 

“I don’t know, kid. He’s awfully good. He trained with Vulcans.” 

“Yeah? Well, most of the crew is human, and you’re still the best doctor in my book,” he said, giving his friend a hug. 

McCoy scowled and ruffled his hair affectionately. “Anyway. I came to tell you ‘cause the crew’s throwing him a retirement party. Boyce, I mean.” 

“I’m still confined to my quarters.” 

“Can’t you get Pike to make an exception?”  

“I’ll ask, but I don’t like my chances. The man essentially grounded me, he isn’t going to let me go to a party now.” 

* * *

 

He did. 

Pike is a huge, huge softie who loves his crew way too much to keep from his favorite science officer from going to his favorite doctor’s going away party. 

But this was absolutely  _it_  and after that Jim was going straight back to his room. 

“And this is a human party!” Jim announced grandiosely, presenting the room to Spock and Michael. “They’re usually much cooler than this, I swear.” 

“Cool?” Spock asked. 

“It’s a human colloquialism. It means, like, amazing or something.” 

“Ah.” 

Rec room three was full of people milling about, talking. There was punch, both spiked and unspiked, and an assortment of hors d’oeuvres and fancily plated snacks to choose from. Old jazz music was playing from somewhere, and the lighting was soft without being dark. 

 Jim turned to Spock. “You wanna dance?” 

“Nobody else is dancing.” 

“Somebody has to be the first to start.” 

“I do not know how to dance in the human fashion.” 

Jim shrugged. “We can dance in the Vulcan fashion. The human way involves touching hands anyway, and you probably wouldn’t wanna do that.” 

“Not publicly, no,” Spock said dryly, and Jim grinned. 

“Teach me the Vulcan way?” he asked, looking at him with the purest golden eyes Spock had ever seen in his life. He nodded. 

He aligned their bodies so they were inches apart but never touching, and the little air between them seemed teasing. He began moving in rhythm with the music, in graceful, poetic movements. Jim mirrored him exactly, keeping in perfect sync, anticipating his every move through the bond and matching it before it even happens. 

Bones hooted with laughter, standing beside a smiling Michael. A few other couples began dancing as well, most of them dragged onto the floor half-unwillingly but smiling all the same.  

Pike took a holo of it. 

* * *

 

“I will message you as soon as I arrive on Earth,” Michael promised, stepping onto the transporter pad beside Boyce and the infirm crewmen. 

“I will answer in due course,” Spock said. 

“Farewell, my brother.” 

“Farewell, ko-kai t’nash-veh.” 

She disappeared in a beam of light. 


	16. Literacy

The beam back brought up three new crewmen: a security ensign, a new captain’s yeoman, and a navigator.  
  
Thompson.  
  
Rand.  
  
Chekov.  
  
Or at least, that was what they had been told.  
  
“You’re just a kid!” Pike said.  
  
“Actually, I am seventeen. Practically an adult,” the kid said in a thick Russian accent.  
  
“We were told we were getting an experienced navigator.”  
  
“And I am one. I completed my Academy training through correspondence last year. I graduated top of the class. I was placed on the starbase on a temporary basis until a navigator position on a starship opened up.”  
  
The conversation continued on after that, but Spock was no longer listening. Correspondence school. He had never heard of such a thing.  
  
The more he considered it, the more logical the idea seemed to him. He lived on a starship. His bondmate was in Starfleet. His sister was in Starfleet. He quite possibly owed the ‘Fleet his life and freedom.  
  
It was an opportunity to learn, and that was the most enticing aspect of all.  
  
He would speak to Jim about it tonight, he decided.

* * *

“I would like to make a request of you,” Spock said. Jim perked up. That was rare.  
  
“Yeah, sure, anything. What is it?”  
  
“I would like to enroll in the Starfleet Academy’s correspondence program.”  
  
His eyebrows shot up and a huge grin broke out on his face. “Seriously?”  
  
“Yes, most seriously.”  
  
“Oh my god! That’s great!” he said, standing. It was all he could do not to give Spock a huge hug, but he knew how invasive that would feel to a touch telepath. “You can totally do that and make it work. You can do all your field training right here on the Enterprise. Hell, you’ll probably graduate faster than I did.”  
  
“I doubt that. My basic education is severely lacking. I will have much to catch up on before reaching the collegiate level. In addition, I am still completely reliant on the Universal Translator to render my speech into Standard, which is what the courses will be taught in.”  
  
“Spock, I promise you, if you ever need help studying or help with _anything_ , I will be there. You can count on me. You got that?”  
  
Spock looked at the human and felt the truth of his words through the bond. Yes. Jim was trustworthy. It escaped him how he had even been able to doubt that for so long.  
  
He nodded.

* * *

Spock sat down on a couch on the observation deck and within seconds, an Orion woman plopped down next to him.  
  
“Hiya Spock! Long time no see,” she said. At his confused expression, she explained. “Oh, that’s a human saying I picked up. Sometimes they do this thing where they leave out key words from their sentences to make them shorter. It has been a long time since I have last seen you.”  
  
“Ah,” he said. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Ms. Vro.”  
  
She snorted. “You can call me Gaila. It’s not like we’re on duty or anything. Hey, speaking of which, I heard you’re going to go through the Academy! That’s exciting, isn’t it?”  
  
“As a follower of Surakian teachings, I strive not to feel emotions such as excitement. It is, however, fortuitous.”  
  
She laughed. “’Fortuitous,’ wow. Someone’s been practicing their Standard.”  
  
“I am currently using a Universal Translator. I do not know the actual Standard word on my own.”  
  
“Oh,” she said. “Do you have anyone who’s helping you learn?”  
  
“Jim would help me if I asked, but…”  
  
“It’s embarrassing,” she nodded. “Hey. You know what helped me when I first moved to the Federation?”  
  
He quirked an eyebrow in question.  
  
“Terrans have this special thing they invented just a handful of centuries ago. They’re books designed just for children. It’s supposed to teach you how to read. They do their education real gradually, in lots of phases. You don’t learn to read all at once. First, they start you out with only basic, common, small words. Then you move into more complicated ones. It’s sort of weird, how they decide you don’t learn certain words until you reach a certain age, but their sorting system makes learning the language really easy.”  
  
“These books are intended for Terran children?”  
  
“I won’t tell anyone. It can be a secret.”  
  
“I am most grateful for your generosity, Ms—Gaila.”  
  
She smiled.

* * *

Spock knows how to read. In Vulcan. It was his most closely guarded secret, back on the homeworld. It could have cost both him and Sybok greatly if anyone had found out—and Michael too, if the police had elected to interrogate him with a mind meld.  
  
But now, here, on the Enterprise, everybody reads. Words are written everywhere. Literacy is a token, expected among all members of their society. Words are written on doors, on signs, on computer displays, on padds, on datachips that everyone has access to. They’re an unnoticed part of the background, displayed for all to see rather than hidden, treasured, secret.  
  
There are hardly any pictures in comparison. And they use so many labels, on everything, as if they can’t be troubled to remember what anything is.  
  
Abundance. That’s the word that comes to Spock’s mind. They live in an abundance. And they have no idea.  
  
He had spent the past hour and a half muddling through a highly illustrated children’s book with hardly more than three or four sentences per page, painstakingly looking up every single word in a translation program. He was taking notes on a padd in his chickenscratch Vulcan, writing down comments and reminders and little quirks he noticed. Standard grammar and syntax was… different. Completely foreign.  
  
That was to be expected, of course. He should have anticipated it would be this difficult, if not moreso.  
  
And then there was spelling and phonetics. Standard had originated on Earth, and apparently coming up with a logical linguistic system had been the last thing on their minds there. Some letters made completely different sounds depending on what word they were in or, more confusingly, where they were placed in the same word.  
  
They had this thing. They called them homonyms. They were words that were spelled exactly the same but had different meanings and were pronounced differently.  
  
The sheer illogic of it.  
  
It was not rational to become irritated at a language—in fact, it was very un-Surakian—so Spock did not.  
  
He did experience some moderate relief upon his eventual completion of the book.  
  
He decided that was quite enough Standard for the day and went to the computer terminal to vidcall Sybok.  
  
“Hello, brother,” he said as the connection flickered to life, offering the ta’al. Sybok returned the gesture.  
  
“Where is Michael?” he asked.  
  
“By my estimate, she will be arriving on Earth in twenty-two point nine hours. She is currently en route on a shuttle directly to San Francisco, the city where the Starfleet Academy is located.”  
  
Sybok frowned. “Why is she going there? Is she in trouble? Was she discovered by the authorites?”  
  
“She was discovered, however, the authorities elected to ignore the transgression as an expression of mercy. She is going to the Academy with the purpose of joining Starfleet upon gradutation.”  
  
“Why would she do that? She understands what Starfleet is, correct?”  
  
“I believe she is aware, yes,” Spock said dryly.  
  
“It’s a branch of the Federation’s military! What if we go to war?”  
  
“Starfleet is primarily a peacekeeping and exploratory organization.”  
  
“Headed by the government!”  
  
“Not all governments are corrupt, Sybok.”  
  
“She doesn’t know anything about this one. Or about the Federation. I don’t see how you can support this.”  
  
“Sybok, I am joining Starfleet as well.”  
  
He went silent.  
  
For a long, long, while.  
  
“I only wish it were anyone but you,” he muttered.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“You’re a pacifist, Spock. In a military organization. And I don’t care what you say, Starfleet is still undeniably military. Your own morals will be your downfall.”  
  
“I fail to understand your logic.”  
  
“See, that’s the problem, Spock. Surak’s ideas about peace and such were fine, but not everything is logical, especially not with humans, and you need to realize that.”  
  
“I do realize that.”  
“Do you? Do you really?” he asked. “Because when they find out just how skilled, they’re going to want to use you for all you are worth. Your strength, your telepathy, your very heart and soul—all become simple tools for the Federation. There will come a day, Spock, when they ask you to do unspeakable. When they order you to do unspeakable things.”  
  
“The Federation is not like that. Their civilization is different.”  
“How different, Spock?” Sybok asked sadly. “Governments will be governments and militaries will be militaries and that is the way of the universe.”  
  
“Not in this respect.”  
  
“You’re an idealist, little brother.”  
  
“I thought you were as well.”  
  
“You can have morals and accept reality for what it is at the same time.”  
  
His jaw clenched. “With all your talk about how governments are unchangeably bad, you are beginning to sound like Sarek.”  
  
His face darkened. “You will not speak to me in this manner. You know full well that is not the idea I meant to convey. I only wish to protect you. Sarek wishes to control you.”  
  
“I am perfectly capable of protecting myself. I know more about the realities of the universe than you ever will, Your Highness.”  
  
“You think me ignorant because I was born to privilege?” he asked. “I grew up at your side, brother. I spent more time in the slaves’ quarters than in the royal chambers. I have risked my life time and time again for the abolitionist cause.”  
  
“So that gives you the right to dictate my choices, does it, Master?”  
  
“It gives me the right to be heard and respected, Spock. I am trying to look out for you.”  
  
“And I am trying to live my own life.”  
  
Sybok shook his head. “Live long and prosper, little brother.”  
  
“You as well.” Spock ended the call.

* * *

It made the news.  
  
**VULCAN SLAVE MARRIES FLEET HOTTIE: INSIDER SCOOP  
  
ALIEN SLAVE SET TO JOIN STARFLEET  
  
SF FORCES OFFICER TO MARRY SLAVE FROM SAVAGE WORLD  
  
OPINION: SHOULD FOREIGN HYBRIDS BE ALLOWED IN FEDERATION ARMED FORCES?**  
  
It got progressively worse from there.  
  
When he walked into the mess hall, it all went silent and every eye zeroed in on him. He faltered.  
  
He saw Jim wave him over, and hurried to his table with relief.  
  
“Heard you’re joinin’ Starfleet,” McCoy said.  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“Good for you. Welcome to the service.”  
  
Spock blinked up at him inquisitively. The blonde woman at his side smiled warmly.  
  
“I’m sure you’re gonna do great, Spock. Don’t pay any attention to what other people say,” Uhura said.  
  
“Aye, lad. We all support ya,” Scotty said.  
  
“It is illogical to offer your support after knowing me so briefly. I have yet to prove myself worthy of it.”  
  
“You’re worthy of it in my book,” Jim said. “You don’t need to do anything to be ‘worthy’ of supportive friends, Spock. That’s what we’re here for.”  
  
The other humans chimed in their agreement, and for the umpteenth time, Spock was floored by them, floored by these extraordinary beings who offered their unyielding loyalty so quickly to a man they hardly knew.  
  
He felt pride and affection bubbling up from his bondmate and Spock was in awe.  
  
He felt like he could do this.


	17. Sleeping Arrangements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a short transition chapter? It kinda got away from me. Anyway, warnings for character death and also if you have any past experiences with sexual assualt/rape, then don't read the scenes that are in italics.

Spock couldn’t sleep.

He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t sleep.

He had not been alone at night since he was a young child, before he had been put to work as a slave. He supposed technically it was a privilege. To him, it seemed so in name only. It was remarkably unenjoyable.

It was too quiet. It was too cold. He felt like he was trapped alone in a box.

He wished Jim was here.

It had been four days since Michael left and meditation could only do so much.

Technically, he knew he could go much longer without sleep. If necessary. It just wasn’t particularly healthy.

Already, his focus was decreased by twenty-something percent. He was experiencing headaches, dizziness, and occasional lightheadedness. His controls were not at optimal strength. His shielding was becoming more difficult to maintain.

He would persevere.

Except there was a ninety—seventy—pretty good chance that he would pass out from exhaustion at some point in the next three days.

He weighed his options.

Option A: He ignores the problem for as long as he possibly can. Meditation helps stave off the inevitable for a bit. He eventually collapses. If it is in public, Jim will be alerted and he will react in some unpredictable manner, probably negatively. If it is in private, he could possibly suffer serious injuries such as a concussion or death—depending on the location, with no one around to call for a medic. He might then be discovered while unconscious/dead, or he might get up and walk it off with no one the wiser.

Option B: He goes to Jim’s room and asks to sleep with him in the way that is not a Terran euphemism. He is possibly misunderstood. Things become awkward between them, and Spock is barred from contact with his bondmate, his trusted bondmate. Or, he is not misunderstood and Jim rejects his suggestion anyway, with the same result as previously mentioned, though perhaps with more mockery. Finally, there is the possibility that Jim accepts his request and Spock can finally fucking sleep.

Six possible outcomes. Four of them were undesirable. He was not fond of those odds.

He decided he was too tired to truly care and he wanted Jim’s arms around him like when they had slept in the desert more than anything, so he got up and knocked on his bondmate’s door.

A thump, a curse, some shuffling. Jim opened the door, bleary eyed and wild-haired and still warm from his bed. He yawned and smiled sleepily. “Yeah, Spock?”

His voice caught in his throat. No words would come out.

Jim took in his haggard appearance, the bags under his eyes, the pallor of his skin, the rumpled sleep clothes he was wearing. “Come on in,” he said.

He figured it must be pretty bad for Spock to actually come to him. He assumed it had been a nightmare. He probably didn’t want to know.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“I did not have a nightmare. I am merely incapable of sleep at the moment.”

“Oh,” he said. “Are you sick or something? Do I need to get Bones?”

“I am not unwell. The problem is that…” This was embarrassing. He was not a child that needed coddling. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. “I apologize for disturbing you. I will be leaving now.”

“Spock, no, wait!” Jim said. “You can talk to me about anything, you know that, right? I’m not here to judge you. You can trust me.”

“I know this.”

“Then what is it? Why won’t you talk to me?” He seemed genuinely concerned. Spock’s unease melted a bit.

Jim had never lied to him. He would not judge him. He was beyond worthy of trust.

“I have never slept alone before. I find the sensation unsettling.”

“…Oh,” he said. “You can come to my bed if you want. I promise I won’t touch you.”

“You may touch me if you wish.”

“Spock, I thought we talked about this. I would never—“

“I realize how that sentence may have sounded, and I would like to assure you that I did not mean it like that.”

“Okay. Good. I’m not that type of husband, Spock, and I never will be. Do you accept that?” 

“I do.”

“Good.”

There was a moment of awkwardness before they crawled into bed together. They lay stiffly half a foot apart, Jim stalwartly not touching Spock and Spock somewhat lost at his own desire to be touched.

* * *

 

They woke up tangled in a knot of limbs and blankets, thoroughly intertwined. Or rather, Jim woke up. Spock was still dead to the world, head curled up on Jim’s chest and arms wrapped around his middle.

Jim smiled, a pleasant warmth blossoming in the center of his chest. It felt right. Good. Like this was always meant to be, him and Spock, no matter what. He could stay like this forever.

The tingle of his bondmate’s wakefulness roused Spock and his eyelashes brushed Jim’s bare skin as he blinked awake. He tensed immediately, preparing to quickly move away and apologize for overstepping his bounds, when he felt Jim’s warm contentment and sank back into his previous position.

Jim had felt him tense and frowned at the reaction, extracting himself. “Spock, I told you, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Anything.”

Spock sat up, feeling bereft. “I was not disinclined towards our previous arrangement.”

“You sure? I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable.”

“I am certain.”

He smiled, and Spock didn’t ever want him to stop.

* * *

 

It becomes a permanent arrangement after that. Spock’s quarters are slowly abandoned, his meager possessions moved into Jim’s. They slowly get more comfortable with each other, more affectionate.

Not that it isn’t without its complications.

_Spock was five years, three months, and 2.7 days old and he was sitting in a dark room. The door was locked from the outside. The door was always locked from the outside, except for twice a day when the adults first rose and when they later went to bed. During that time, Sarek would run his fingerprint over the scanner and light would pour in and Spock would be allowed to see his mother for precisely five minutes._

_Or rather, Amanda would be allowed to see Spock. Spock was young, but even then he had caught on that Sarek did not extend them that courtesy for his sake._

_The room is dark. It used to be a storage closet, so it has no light. It is a perfect square and it takes Spock eleven of his tiny footsteps to cross from one side to the next. There are bathroom facilities in one corner and a small pile of bedding in another. Twice a day, food and water is delivered through a slat in the bottom of the door._

_He was trapped alone in a box._

_Sarek would not spare a slave to babysit a burdensome child he had not wished for in the first place._ _A slave that did not work was not worth the food he was fed. The only reason he had not sold Spock upon the moment of his birth was because Amanda had managed to manipulate a vow out of him. The child remained idle to this day only because Amanda had a particularly pleasurable way of expressing her gratitude for that fact._

_The room was adjacent to one of the larger sitting rooms in the mansion and Spock could hear the adults conversing on the other side of the wall. Sarek was entertaining a visiting duke from a neighboring sector._

_Amanda was draped over Sarek in his armchair, wearing revealing silks and sheer scarves that marked her as a sex slave. The clothing allowed the numerous bruises and bite marks on her skin to be visible—something that Sarek liked to show off. Her hair was long and loose and wild in the exotic style of her homeworld, making her look every bit a wanton woman by Vulcan standards. Sarek had ordered she keep it that way._

_She was his favorite out of all his concubines._ _She was so much more delicate than the others._ _Foreign in a new, exciting, exotic sort of way._

_Exotic. Yes. That was it. His human was exotic._

_That was what Duke Skivlar had to say about her too._

_He ran two fingers over the human on Sarek’s lap_ _, inspecting her, eyes lighting up when she flinched as he went over bruises._

_“Fascinating,” he said. “A very interesting specimen. Wh_ _ere did you acquire it?”_

_“An Orion trader,” Sarek replied_ _. “He was mostly carting lodubyaln, but he did have a few aliens on his ship. She was unseemly expensive, but well worth it, in my opinion.”_

_“Hmm. Indeed_ _.”_ _He flicked at her nipple, and she jerked. “Very responsive.”_

_“Part of the appeal of her species.”_

_“Do you have any others?”_

_“Yes, two. A_ _n eleven-year-old female and_ _a five-year-old male.”_

_“Do they serve the same purpose?”_

_“No. The female is a house slave, and the male is not currently in use.”_

_“_ _What do you mean, he is not in use?”_

_“He is stored in that room there.” Sarek gestured with his head._

_“May I see him?”_

_“It is agreeable.”_

_Spock shuffled backwards in the dark room at the sound of footsteps approaching. He listened to the faint hum of the scanner._ _The door swung outward in a wash of_ _light, and he blinked._

_“Come, Spock.”_

_He scrambled to his feet and_ _scurried out the door, coming to a stop in the_ _center of the room_ _._

_Skivlar_ _rose and crossed over to him,_ _threading fingers through his hair._ _“How much?”_  

_“I beg your pardon?” Sarek_ _asked._

_“How much for him?”_    
   
 _“He is not for sale.”_  

_“Whyever not? You said he was not in use.”_

_Sarek hesitated. He could not say that he had made a vow to his bedslave. One simply did not make vows to slaves. They were not to be bestowed that honor, the honor of a Vulcan’s word._ _He could not say that he_ _had given Amanda his word, that he had treated a slave almost as his equal—however briefly._

_“What if I made you an offer only a fool would refuse?”_

_“What is it?”_

_Skivlar pulled a padd off the coffee table and scribbled down a figure on it,_ _passing it to_ _Sarek. Amanda was hardly breathing. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t._

_Sarek’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly—something that never happened. Amanda snap_ _ped. She rushed to Skivlar, grabbing him by the arms._

_“Take me instead!” she said. “I’ll do anything, please!”_

_He regarded her coldly. “I have little interest in adult women.”_

_“Amanda,” Sarek said warningly._

_She bit her lip and lowered her lashes. “I can be very… childlike.”_

_“You are being insubordinate, kafeh. The trensular are talking. Mind your place.”_

_Sarek’s gaze was searing. “I assure you the kafeh will be duly punished, my liege. Let us conclude our business.”_

_“No!” Amanda slapped him. “You will not sell my son!”_

_She froze the instant her outburst was over. The two Vulcans fixed their eyes on her, and she knew what would happen now. She knew why she had never struck Sarek before. She knew she had been pushing it with the insubordination, but this went beyond even that._

_She had rebelled._

_With Skivlar and Spock watching, Sarek unsheathed his sword._

Spock woke up screaming.

Jim yelped and fell out of bed in a tangle of sheets. “What, what is it?!”

Spock’s chest was heaving, his breathing ragged.

Control. Control control control control.

Jim was looking at him with deep concern in his eyes. “Spock?”

_Hot drops of red blood splattered across his face. Amanda hit the ground with a thud, more blood pooling out of her._

_She wasn’t dead yet. Bleeding out would take a while. Her eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling_ _as she choked on gargled blood_ _._

_“Perhaps your humans are more trouble than they are worth,” Skivlar said._

“Spock?”

“I am adequate.”

“No you’re not.” Jim sat back down on the bed. 

“I apologize for my emotionalism. It was not my intent to wake you. You have my sincerest regrets.”

“Spock, you don’t need to apologize for having a nightmare. It’s not like you could control that.”

“A Vulcan could. Vulcans do not have such dreams.”

“It’s okay that you do. It doesn’t make you… less, somehow.”

“It is an objective fact that I am less purely Vulcan than my peers.”

“So? Having nightmares doesn’t make you weak, Spock. I have nightmares. Do you consider that a failing on my part?”

“You are human. The standards you hold yourself to are different.”

“But you’re half-human. So logically, shouldn’t you take that into account when creating standards for yourself?”

Spock was silent for a moment. 

“Whatever it was, Spock, it doesn’t speak ill of you for having experienced it. Everybody’s been through some tough shit in their lives—some moreso than others. The important thing is that you survive. You can move on. You can still live a good life even after everything that’s happened.”

“How can you know this?” he asked harshly. Brief anger flashed across Jim’s face.

“Vulcans are telepaths, right?” he asked. “Is there some way I can show you something?”

Wordlessly, Spock nodded. He brought his fingers up to Jim’s meld points.

And then he was in him, in that bright, beautiful, dynamic mind, swirling and twisting and glowing and moving around and in and through each other, woven together eternally, irrevocably. Permanently. The bond flared to life, a bright heat between them, each other’s essence flowing together until they mixed and became one.

Eternal. It felt eternal.

Jim was the first to come to his senses and remember they had done this with a purpose.  _How do I do this? Do I just… think about it and then you’ll see?_

_Yes._

And so Jim did.

_He was thirteen when he went to live with his aunt and uncle on Tarsus VI, both of his parents off on long-term missions._ _It was fine at first. Not fun, but fine._

_Then the famine struck_ _and his aunt died and Frank changed after that. There may not have been food, but they still had plenty to drink, and Frank did drink._

_They sent distress signal after distress signal to the Federation before the colonial government gave up and declared themselves independent. The revolution was successful. They could make their own rules now, and the first thing Kodos did was cull half the population._

_The useless ones, he said._

_Jim knew he was a horrible person for thinking it but he couldn’t stop wondering why Frank hadn’t been killed. He wished he had been, and he hated himself for that._

_But still it wasn’t enough. There still wasn’t enough food._ _Frank stopped feeding him, kicked him out, blamed his growing metabolism for his wife’s death and got black-out drunk and nearly beat him into the grave._

_A little camp in the woods with other kids who had been kicked out, whose parents were prioritizing their own lives. Kevin Riley. Thomas Leighton. Angie Berkowicz. A mute four-year-old whose name they didn’t know. Sam._

_Jim was good at sneaking, good at stealing. He was crafty and clever and a great liar. He was the one who would sneak back into the colony and carry off food for the rest of the kids._

_It got harder and harder as time progressed and people got more paranoid, got more careful. There came a day when he had nothing to show for his efforts. But he refused to go back empty-handed._

_He approached one of Kodos’ precious, privileged guards who had a different sort of hunger in her eyes and he offered her anything she wanted in exchange for a sandwich._

_He did not think he would live to get off of Tarsus IV but he was fifteen and Starfleet came_ _like heroes out of the sky and somehow he lived_ _._

The connection broke. Neither was sure who had severed it.

Jim met his gaze head-on. “You can survive anything, Spock.”

He swore in that moment that he would do anything to ensure Jim was never in that position again. He would protect his bondmate with his very life.


	18. The Naked Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adapted from the tos episode, in case the title wasn’t obvious.
> 
> T’hy’lahali = literally translated, “t’hy’la-ship,” essentially the feeling(s) one has toward their t’hy’la

It should have been a simple mission, really. Just picking up a science party and observing the breakup of Psi 2000. A milk run.  
  
It should have been easy.  
  
Chris and Jim beamed down into a research station entirely encrusted in frost. A scientist sat slumped over dead at their station.  
  
Jim got out his tricorder and took readings of the body.  
  
“Check out the life support systems,” Pike commanded.  
  
“Right, sir,” Kirk said. He went off to the engineering section, hazmat suit crinkling as he walked. Pike searched the surrounding rooms, finding the body of another scientist almost immediately once he stepped through a doorway.  
  
Jim came back, ready to report. “All life systems were off, sir.” He knelt beside the body and got out his tricorder anew.  
  
“Someone strangled this woman,” Pike said, gesturing to the hideous marks on her neck.  
  
“The other four are back there,” Kirk jerked his head to the room he had just exited.  
  
“Dead?”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“Engineer at his post?”  
“He’s frozen there like he didn’t care. Like he didn’t even notice it was happening.”  
  
“And the rest?”  
  
“… Maybe you should look for yourself. One man was taking a shower fully clothed.”  
  
Pike went to inspect the remaining rooms while Jim went to take scans of the other bodies. His stupid hazmat gloves were too big and fumbly. He wouldn’t work the delicate touchscreen of the tricorder while wearing them.  
  
Why the hell hadn’t Starfleet thought to account for that?  
  
It wasn’t like there was anything dangerous here anyway. As far as Jim was concerned, the case was open and shut: critical engineering systems failure. Life support had shut down, and the cold had gotten them. He took off his right glove to take the required readings and put it back on again in under three seconds.  
  
There. That was better.  
  
Pike walked back in the room. “Be sure not to expose yourself to anything,” he said, and Jim swore he was a telepath. At the very least, he had eyes in the back of his head specifically designed to catch Jim’s every fault.  
  
He flicked his communicator out. “Pike here. Do you read, Enterprise?”  
  
“Affirmative,” Number One’s smooth voice said.  
  
“All attendant personnel are dead,” he said, cutting right to the chase.  
  
“What caused it?”  
  
“Haven’t figured that out yet, Number One.”  
  
“I have, sorta,” Kirk said. “The life support system cut out.”  
  
“Was it a technical failure of some sort?”  
  
“It has to be,” he shrugged.  
  
“What do you mean by that?”  
  
“Well, for all intents and purposes, it looks like it was just turned off. If I didn’t know better, I’d say a bunch of kids had been messing around in here and one of them pressed the wrong button. All systems are functioning perfectly and I can’t find any fault with them.”  
  
Pike frowned, that one wrinkle showing up between his eyebrows again. “I don’t like the feel of this. Let’s get out of here and do our analysis on the ship. Two to beam up, Commander.”  
  
“Aye, Captain.”

* * *

After they were decontaminated, Pike insisted they have medical look them over as well. Which was fine by Jim, it just meant he got to spend time messing around with Bones while the poor doctor tried to give him an exam.  
  
Plus, Spock came to see him.  
  
He laid back on the flippy table-bed thing in his regulation blacks while Bones stared at the monitor showing his readings.  
  
“Your pulse is sixty-seven, your blood pressure is 130 over 60, your temp is normal and your bloodwork came back normal. You’ve lost a few pounds since your stint on Vulcan, though, and I don’t like that. You need to eat more.”  
  
“I’m a grown man, Bones, and I’m perfectly fine.” He rolled his eyes.  
  
“You’re as healthy as a horse, Commander,” Chapel said, readjusting the exam table so he could stand.  
  
“Are horses the ultimate standard for health on your planet?” Spock asked her, and she gave a small smile.  
  
“Oh, it’s just a saying, Mr. Spock. One of those funny human colloquialisms we always use,” she said.  
  
“Intriguing,” he replied. She blushed under his gaze, still smiling. Jim frowned.  
  
“Well, Spock, since you’re going to be Starfleet soon, what do you think? What’s your assessment of the situation, husband?” he asked with a flirtatious smile on his lips. Spock didn’t seem to notice. He still wasn’t that good at reading humans.  
  
“I wish I could say, Commander. The circumstances were quite bizarre, however the record tapes may show us something.”  
  
“Six dead. Six people dead,” the orderly who had been attending them said, shaking his head.  
  
“Why don’t you take a break, Tormolen,” McCoy said, patting him on the shoulder. “You’re about due for one.”

* * *

“It’s almost as if they were irrational, drugged,” Kirk said, watching the spectro-analysis tape in the briefing room with the other department heads. “An engineer sitting there apparently oblivious to everything. A woman strangled, a man with a phaser pistol in his hand. He’d used the computer control room as if it were an amusement gallery. And a fully clothed man frozen to death in a shower. If it wasn’t so horrible, it’d be laughable.”  
  
“Not even a theory, gentlemen?” Pike asked.  
  
“Definitely not drugs or intoxication. The bioanalysis on the tapes prove that conclusively,” McCoy said. “It could be some form of space madness we’ve never heard of.”  
  
“But it would have to be caused by something,” Kirk said. “All the scans were perfectly normal. Our spectro readings showed no contamination, no unusual elements present.”  
  
“Or at least none your tricorder could register,” Scotty said.  
  
“That’s true. It’ll only register what it’s designed to register. There’s still so much out in space that we haven’t discovered,” Number One said.  
  
“Federation science needs the closest possible measurement of the breakup of this planet. To get that, we need the Enterprise in a critically tight orbit around it. So. Could what happened down there to those people create any unusual danger to this vessel and crew?” Pike asked.  
  
For a few moments, all was silent.  
  
“We’ll need top efficiency, Captain. It’ll be a tricky orbit,” Scott said.  
  
“When the planet starts to break up, there’ll be drastic changes to its gravity, mass, magnetic field…” Kirk trailed off.  
  
“The purpose of a briefing, people, is to get the answers based on your abilities and experience. In a critical orbit, there’s no time for surprise,” Pike said warningly.  
  
“Unless you people on the bridge start taking showers with your clothes on, my engines can pull us out of anything,” Scott said. “We’ll be warping out of orbit within a half second of gettin’ your command.”  
  
“Good. I’ll hold you to that half second, Mr. Scott.”

* * *

“It’s a rapier. A thin sword,” Sulu said.  
  
“Alright. So what do you do with it?” Kevin Riley asked, following him into the mess hall.  
  
“What do you mean, what do you do with it?”  
  
“Self-defense? Mayhem? Shish kebab?”  
  
“You practice,” Sulu said emphatically.  
  
“For what?” Riley asked. They took their seats next to Tormolen. Riley turned to him. “Last week, it was botany he was trying to get me interested in. I was supposed to be collecting leaves, plant specimens.”  
  
“Your attitude is all wrong. Fencing tones the muscle, sharpens the eye, improves the posture.” He gestured helplessly at the lieutenant, looking to Tormolen for sympathy. The man was scratching the palm of his hand with enough force to break the thickened skin there, studiously staring at it and paying no mind to the conversation around him. Sulu knocked his hand away before he could hurt himself.  
  
“Hey, Joey. You feeling alright?” he asked.  
  
“Get off me! You don’t rank me, so just get off my neck!”  
  
“What’s with him?” Kevin asked.  
  
“Nothing,” Tormolen slammed the cover off his plate of food and began digging in forcefully—for a few seconds. He went back to rubbing at his hand, trying to be less destructive in his scratching.  
  
The intercom chimed, and Uhura’s voice filtered through. “Attention. Engine room on standby alert. All duty personnel to the bridge. Acknowledge.”  
  
Riley finished off the last of his drink, both he and Sulu standing up. “You sure you’re alright now, Joe?” Sulu asked. “We’ve got to leave.”  
  
“We’re all a bunch of hypocrites, sticking our noses into something that we’ve got no business. What are we doing out here, anyway?”  
  
“Take it easy, Joe,” Sulu moved to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but the man jerked back as if it were an attack. He stood abruptly, knocking his chair over.  
  
“We bring pain and trouble with us, leave men and women stuck out in freezing planets until they die. What are we doing out here in space? Good? What good?” he asked. “We’re polluting it, destroying it! We’ve got no business being out here, no business!”  
  
“Take it easy, Joe,” Riley said.  
  
“Now, calm down—“  
  
Tormolen grabbed the knife off his tray and pointed it at Sulu. His friends immediately froze, not moving another inch.  
  
“If man was supposed to fly, he’d have wings. If he was supposed to be out in space, he wouldn’t need air to breathe. Wouldn’t need life support to keep him from freezing to death.” His eyes looked wild, pained, sad and hysteric all at once.  
  
“Hey, Joey, put the knife down, huh?” Riley said placatingly.  
  
“You’re all steamed up, Joe,” Sulu said.  
  
“We don’t belong here. It’s not ours. Not ours.” He seemed barely aware that he even had an audience any more. “Destroying and watching. We don’t belong.”  
  
The knife changed hands, changed angles, pointed at himself rather than at Sulu.  
  
“I don’t belong,” he said, choking on a sob. “Six people died down there. Why do I deserve to live?”  
  
“What are you doing, Joe?” Sulu asked.  
  
“Hey, Joey, put the knife down.” Riley rushed at him, grabbing his fist with both hands and pulling the knife away from his body, but Tormolen refused to lessen his grip. “Don’t be a fool, Joey.”  
  
“Let go of me!”  
  
Suddenly they were struggling, screaming at each other, both gripping the knife and trying to pull it towards themselves in a sick game of tug-of-war. Sulu ran around to the other side of the table and tackled Tormolen by the shoulders, trying to hold him back, pull him back, shouting the entire time as the mess hall watched, breathless. They each had one of his arms, but Tormolen was in a frenzy, unrestrainable.  
  
A sudden push from Tormolen sent them all falling to the ground in a heap, and the man landed straight on the blade of his knife.

* * *

“His breathing rate is dropping, doctor,” Chapel said, looking at the monitors in the midst of surgery.  
  
“Compensate with the respirator,” McCoy said.  
  
She did, but the rate continued to drop.  
  
“Stand by to close,” McCoy said. Chapel handed him an instrument. “Closing.”  
  
His vitals dropped lower and lower and lower.  
  
“This shouldn’t be happening. This man should be getting stronger,” McCoy said in frustration. “Are you sure the respirator’s functioning properly?”  
“Yes, doctor.”  
  
“Then why is this man dying?” he asked. “Hypo.”  
  
She handed it to him, and he held it up to the light before injecting it into his patient. The vitals continued to drop.  
  
“He’s dead, doctor.”  
  
He shook his head. “The wounds were not that severe,” he said, staring at the monitor in disbelief.

* * *

Sulu and Riley were at the helm.  
  
“Don’t know if it’s this planet or what happened with Joe. I’m sweating like a bridegroom,” Sulu said, rubbing his itchy hand against his shirt.  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Riley said, fidgeting with his hands and rolling his fingers.  
  
“Hey, why don’t you come down to the gym with me, Kevin, m’lad?”  
  
“Now?”  
  
“Why not? Light workout will take the edge off,” he said, shrugging and heading to the turbolift.  
  
“But Sulu, what about—“ He glanced at the viewscreen and the planet they were supposed to be maintaining a very careful, precarious orbit around. “Sulu, don’t be stupid.”  
  
Sulu grinned, rubbing his hands together and sneaking off the bridge when he was sure Una wasn’t looking. “Come on.”

* * *

McCoy was briefing Pike in sickbay. “Intestinal damage wasn’t that severe. I got to him in plenty of time. That man should still be alive. The only reason he died, Chris, is he didn’t wanna live. He gave up.”  
  
“Is that a medical fact, doctor?”  
  
“It just might be true, though. It just might be,” he said. “I’ve lost patients before, but not like that. Not Joe’s kind. That kind of man doesn’t give up.”  
  
“Coincidence?” Pike asked.  
  
“You mean that this happened right after the landing party came back from that planet, and you’re gonna ask me is it’s connected.”  
  
“Right on the nose, doctor.”  
  
“Captain, everyone was decontaminated. You were all medically checked. We’ve run every test we know for everything we know—“  
  
“Well that’s not good enough.”  
“We’re doing everything possible—“  
  
“Bones, I want the impossible checked out too.”

* * *

The helm control began frantically beeping in warning. Una stepped back onto the bridge. “Kirk, you were supposed to be monitoring things! Why isn’t Mr. Sulu at his station?”  
  
He whirled around from the science station. “What?”  
  
Number One and a yeoman rushed to the abandoned station and hurriedly pressed some buttons.  
  
“Magnetic pull compensated for, ma’am,” the yeoman said. “Orbit steady.”  
  
“Take over here, Rand,” she said. “Lieutenant Riley. Why isn’t Mr. Sulu at his station?”  
  
Riley swirled in his chair to face her. “Have no fear, Riley’s here. One Irishman is worth 10,000 of you Illyrians—“  
  
“You’re relieved. Lieutenant Uhura, take over this station.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“That’s what I like! Let the women work too,” Riley hopped out of his chair and presented it to Uhura. “Universal suffering.” He jabbed a finger in Number One’s face.  
  
“Report to sickbay, Mr. Riley,” she said, her voice icy cold.  
  
“Sickbay?” he asked. He snapped his fingers. “That’s exactly where I was headed. Ma’am.”  
  
He practically danced into the turbolift.  
  
Una pressed a button on the captain’s chair. “Security, Mr. Riley is headed for sickbay. Make sure that he gets there. Captain Pike to the bridge.”

* * *

Sulu ran out into the corridor, shirtless, sweating, rapier in hand. “Richelieu, beware!” He waved the sword around with a flourish and danced forward, jabbing it into the air.  
  
He heard footsteps coming and jumped out from around the corner. “Stand!” he yelled at two crewmen. “No farther.”  
  
He laughed darkly, closing in on his colleagues, who stared slack-jawed at the helmsman. “No escape for you. You either leave this bois bloodied, or with my blood on your swords.”  
  
They didn’t bother pointing out that he was the only one with a sword here.  
  
He lunged at them with a feral cry and they sprinted away like their lives depended on it, Sulu chasing after them in hot pursuit.

* * *

“Ensign Chekov, relieve Ms. Uhura,” Number One said, having called the new recruit to the bridge so they could have an actual navigator manning the navigation.  
  
Her husband walked onto the bridge, and Una stepped out of the captain’s chair, already briefing him. “Nonviolent at this stage. Slightly disoriented. Riley seemed rather pleased with himself, as if he were—“  
  
“Irrational or drugged,” Chris finished.  
  
“M-hmm,” she nodded.  
  
“Security, Lieutenant Uhura. Both Sulu and Riley, locate and confine. I want every crewman who comes in contact with them medically checked.”  
  
“Sir, Level Two corridor three reports a disturbance. Mr. Sulu chasing crewmen—with a sword?”  
  
“Put security on it.”  
  
“Looks like we’ve got a pattern,” Kirk said. “It started with Tormolen. Hidden personality traits were forced to the surface. Their deepest, most repressed impulses came out at full force. Whatever is happening, it causes a complete lack of self-control.”  
  
The bridge shook as another sudden shift in gravity hit it, and the captain called for compensation.  
  
“Helm is not answering to control!” Rand said.  
  
“Warp us out of here.”  
  
“No response from engines, sir.”  
  
“Impulse power, then. Blast us out of this orbit.”  
  
“Impulse engines also dead, sir.”  
  
“Engine room, we need power!” he barked. “Mr. Scott, acknowledge. Our controls are dead. Kirk, get down there to engineering. See what you can do to help.”  
  
He nodded and headed to the turbolift, which opened before he got there to reveal a sword-weilding Sulu. “Richelieu, at last,” he grinned dangerously.  
  
“Sulu, put that—“ he tried to push it away and stuck his hand on the tip of the rapier, drawing out a hiss and a pinprick of blood. “Put that thing away.”  
  
“For honor, queen, and France!” He lunged. Kirk ducked and went over the rails to the captain’s section of the bridge. Uhura leapt out of her seat and Spock rushed onto the bridge out of nowhere.  
  
Sulu laughed and swung the sword between the three of them.  
  
“Sulu,” Uhura said.  
  
“Ahh,” he grinned.  
  
She gave him a friendly smile and started to approach. “Sulu, give me that.”  
  
He grabbed her by the hand and yanked her to his side, holding her pressed up against him. Spock’s face darkened at the display. “I’ll protect you, fair maiden!”  
  
“Sorry, neither.” She shoved him away forcefully, but his manic grip was stronger.  
  
“Foul Richelieu,” Sulu said, sword aimed solely at Kirk now. Just then, Uhura broke free of his grip and made for the turbolift, running to go and get security herself.  
  
Kirk took advantage of the momentary distraction and yanked the rapier out of Sulu’s grip, slicing up his hand in the process. He attacked the man bodily, and both their hands were around each other’s throats, and—  
  
Sulu dropped to the ground like a stone, Spock standing ominously behind him, having just delivered a nerve pinch.  
  
“How’d you do that?” Kirk asked.  
  
“It is a Vulcan technique.”  
  
“Oh, you have to teach me that sometime. That was awesome.”  
  
“Someone take D’Artagnan here to sickbay. Scotty, we need power. Engine room, acknowledge,” Pike said.  
  
“You rang, sir?” Riley asked silkily through the intercom.  
  
“Who is this?” Pike barked.  
  
“This is _Captain_ Kevin Thomas Riley of the Starship Enterprise. And who is this?”  
  
“This is Captain Pike. Now get out of the engine room, navigator. Where’s Mr. Scott?”  
  
“I’ve relieved him of his duties,” he said. He switched to shipwide intercom. “Now, attention cooks. This is your captain speaking. I would like double portions of ice cream for the entire crew.”  
  
Kirk walked up to the turbolift, which refused to open. He banged his fists against it in frustration. Pike gave a quick command to Uhura, who began working the controls at her station, trying to override the door.  
  
“And now, your captain will render an ancient Irish favorite,” Kevin continued. He began to sing. “I’ll take you home again Kathleen—“  
  
The doors opened.  
  
“Kirk, wait. How long do we have until we’re pulled into the planet’s atmosphere?” Pike asked.  
  
“Uhh,” he ran back over to his station. “About twenty minutes.”  
  
Pike nodded tersely, and Jim ran back out to go down to engineering. Scott and an ensign were standing outside the door to the engine room, the ensign trying to coax the door’s locking mechanisms open.  
  
“How did Riley get in there?”  
  
“He ran in, said Pike wanted us on the bridge.”  
  
“He’s cut off both helm and power.”  
  
“And he shut the door behind us and locked off the mechanism.”  
  
“Can’t you get to the auxiliary?”  
“I can’t. He’s hooked everything through the main panel in there.” Scott said. “Get up to my office and pull the plans for this floor.”  
  
The ensign nodded and ran off. Scott tapped along the wall beside the door. “The only way to get through that bulkhead is to cut through these circuits here.”

* * *

Spock went looking for his bondmate.  
  
A nurse was standing in the center of the hallway, laughing hysterically at a paintbrush he held in his hand. Spock barely managed to slip by without getting streaked with red paint.  
  
Twenty feet away, he found the words ‘LOVE MANKIND’ painted in dripping red on the walls.  
  
A man was singing.  
  
“What’s going on?” Spock asked, seeing one crewman leaning in uncomfortably close to another.  
  
“Oh good, it’s you. I’m trying to get to the bridge but this crewman won’t let me by,” Rand said.  
  
“Crewman, step aside,” Spock said in his most commanding, authoritative tone. They didn’t have to know that he wasn’t actually Starfleet yet.  
  
“Oh, uh, yes, sir.” The man stepped back a few steps to let Rand pass, and Spock continued on in the opposite direction. The crewman waited until he was out of sight and then rushed in front of the yeoman to finish his serenade.  
  
“I’ll take you home again, Janice—“  
  
“Spock!”

* * *

Chapel continued monitoring Sulu while McCoy went to the biopsy lab. It was an easy job. A boring job. The man was still sedated and restrained, with no changes since he got there.  
  
Her hands itched.  
  
She set down the scanner and untucked a curl of her hair from the back, letting it fall loose. She should wear her hair down more often. It made her look wilder. Freer. No more stuffy, restrained Nurse Chapel, no. She was Christine. She was gorgeous. She could do whatever she wanted, and no one could stop.  
  
She was the real power in this sickbay, not that McCoy asshole. Everyone knew who was really in charge here. She ran this show. She wasn’t going to just sit placidly and wait for some man to come back with the stupid lab results.  
  
She was dangerous. She was powerful. She was alluring as hell.  
  
Spock walked into sickbay. “Nurse? Where is Dr. McCoy?” Perhaps he would know where Jim was. It was imperative that he not succumb to this strange disease as well. At the very least, the doctor would know far along they were on a cure.  
  
“He’s gone to the lab,” she said. Her eyes raked the Vulcan up and down.  
  
It’s not like his marriage to Kirk was a real one, was it? They weren’t truly involved.  
  
Spock went to the intercom in the next room and tried paging the lab. Chapel decided to follow him.  
  
He gave up and went to go find the doctor himself, but to leave he had to brush past Christine, and she grabbed at his hand when he did. He jerked it away, but she grabbed it again, clasping it firmly in both of her hands.  
  
He could not use violence against a weaker being. It went against the teachings of Surak. Against all his years of subservient conditioning that told him he was not allowed to protest. That he had to remain still and allow this.  
  
His hands itched.  
  
“Spock,” she said. “The men of Vulcan treat their women strangely.”  
  
He looked at her, and she gave an apologetic half-smile. “At least, people say that. But you’re part human too. I know you wouldn’t. You couldn’t hurt me. Would you?”  
  
He slowly extracted his hand and backed away to the door.  
  
“I want you, Spock,” she said. He stopped and turned to her, stunned. His heart was hammering in his side at an inhuman speed. “You. The human Spock, the Vulcan Spock.” She closed the distance between them to a scant few inches.  
  
“Nurse, you should—“  
  
“Christine, please,” she said. “I see things. How honest you are.” She grabbed both of his hands again. “I know how you feel. You hide it, but you do have feeling. Oh, how we must hurt you, torture you.”  
  
She massaged his hands absently, pressing close to him, his back against the wall.  
  
“I’m in control of my emotions,” he said steadily.  
  
She shook her head. “The others believe that. I don’t.” She raised a hand to cup his cheek. “I could love you. Just as you are.” She wrapped both his hands in hers and brought her lips to his fingers. “I love you.”  
  
“I’m sorry—“ he said. “I am sorry.”  
  
“Christine,” she said.  
  
“Christine,” he obliged.  
  
He knew an emotion was showing on his face, some humiliating emotion such as fear or pain. Practically trembling, he pulled his hands away and slid into the doorway.  
  
She didn’t follow him this time.  
  
He slumped against the wall of the next room, shoulders hunched over, hands brought to his face, trying to breathe the tingling, itching sensation away. He swallowed, steadied, straightened his tunic. Took a few steps. Bit his lip and blinked. He walked calmly into an empty conference room.  
  
He was crying. He brought a hand to his eyes and felt hot tears there. Humiliated, they fell faster.  
  
“I’m in control of my emotions.” He breathed deep. “I’m in control of my emotions.” He snapped his head to the side as if to shake bad thoughts out of it.  
  
“I am a Vulcan. A Vulcan.” He slammed a fist into his palm, letting the sharp pain center him like it always did. He braced his feet in the doorway. The simple punch would be enough. He was better than this. He was better than this.  
  
He thought of that crystalline clarity that he would sometimes get—  
  
No.  
  
“My duty. My duty is—“ What was his duty now? He was no longer, but he wasn’t Starfleet yet either. He was nothing, caught in limbo, in a state of useless nonbeing. He took shaky steps forward and collapsed into a chair.  
  
“My duty is to—“ He scrunched up his face as more tears threatened to fall. “Too late. I’m sorry. Two… two, four, six—six—six times… six times…”  
  
He balled his hands into fists, nails digging into soft flesh. Shuddering sobs shook him, and he clenched his teeth and willed his muscles to still.  
  
“Six times.” He gave up and laid his head down on the desk.  
  
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. It felt like hours, but it couldn’t have been. He didn’t allow himself to cry until the emotions passed. No, he didn’t let a single unnecessary tear slip. He repressed and erased and deadened his feelings as soon as he had control enough to do so.  
  
He was Vulcan. Vulcans do not cry.  
  
He felt a warm, pleasant tingle in his mind as his bondmate entered the room.  
  
“Where have you been? What happened?” Kirk asked, taking in the state of his husband.  
  
“My mother,” he said. “I could never tell her I loved her.”  
  
“Listen Spock, I’ll be glad to listen to all this later, but right now we’ve got four or five minutes at the most before this ship gets incinerated and I need your help.”  
  
“An Earth woman, living on a planet where love—weakness—is bad taste.”  
  
Jim grabbed him by the arms and pulled him out of the seat, not touching his skin but hoping the motion would make him come to his senses. “We’ve got to risk a full-power start. The engines have been shut off. No time to regenerate them. Do you hear me?! We’ve got to risk a full-power start!”  
  
“I respected Sarek, our customs, the ways of our world. I tried to be understanding of him. I did not do the same for her,” he continued. “I was ashamed of my Earth blood.”  
  
Jim slapped him.  
  
“Jim, when I feel friendship for you, I’m ashamed.”  
  
He had said t’hy’lahali. The UT rendered it as friendship.  
  
Jim moved to slap him again, and Spock caught his hand in his own, grasping it firmly, his breathing shallow.  
  
“You’ve got to hear me!” Jim yelled. “You’re a genius, Spock, and we need a formula. We’ve got to risk implosion. It’s never been done before! I can’t do this on my own, Spock, I need you.”  
  
Jim wrenched his hand free. He and Spock circled each other like predators, sizing each other up.  
  
“Do you understand, Jim? I’ve spent my whole life learning to hide my feelings.”  
  
Jim slapped him, and Spock slapped him back, harder, knocking him over the over the conference table and onto the other side of the room. Jim was back on his feet in a second, and they were both leaning over the table, glaring at each other with as little distance as possible between them.  
  
“We’ve got to risk implosion. It’s our only chance,” Jim hissed.  
  
“It’s never been done,” Spock shook his head.  
  
“Don’t tell me that again! It’s a theory! It’s possible!” His face was flushed red with exertion and rage. Spock’s blood boiled. “We may go up in the biggest ball of fire since the last sun in these parts exploded, but we’ve got to take that 1 in 10,000 chance!”  
  
His jaw worked, and Spock’s eyes were drawn to a drop of blood on his lip. He clenched his teeth. “I’ve got it. The disease.” This wasn’t him. He wasn’t this violent. He wasn’t this easily angered.  
  
This wasn’t him.  
  
“Love,” he ground out, like it was poison. “You’re better off without it, and I’m better off without mine.”  
The fire in Spock’s blood softened, cooled into something a bit sadder.  
  
“This vessel,” Jim continued. “I give, she takes. She won’t permit me my life. I’ve got to live hers. I have a beautiful yeoman. Have you noticed her, Spock? You’re allowed to notice her. I’m not.”  
  
Spock’s rage was completely gone now, and he just wanted this all to be over. “Jim, there is an intermix formula,” he said.  
  
“Now I know why it’s called she,” Jim looked around at the ship they were in.  
  
“It’s never been tested,” Spock said, trying to hold to his logic, the thin slip of it that he had left, anyway. “It’s a theoretical relationship between time and antimatter.”  
  
“Flesh woman to touch, to hold.” He scratched at his hand. “A beach to walk on. A few days, no braid on my shoulder.”  
  
Scotty came in, and they relayed the current plan, the engineer ushering his new favorite Vulcan out and Kirk steadying himself.  
  
“I’ve got to hang on,” he whispered to the empty room. He looked up to the ceiling. “Never lose you. Never.”

* * *

They did it and they flung themselves back in time three days in the process and for 430 people, the mission to Psi 2000 happened twice.


	19. Friendship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter not only sucks but it’s also shorter than normal because I could not for the life of me figure out what to write next

Jim was across the room, talking and laughing with Scotty and Bones. Spock sat glumly at a table with Gaila, sipping a Cardassian Sunrise she had ordered him even though he told her alcohol had no effect on Vulcans—though, to this immense displeasure, he had just discovered that it apparently had somewhat of an effect on him.  
  
Marginally.  
  
He sipped more of the sunrise.  
  
“What’s your problem, sweetheart?” Gaila asked.  
  
He blinked and straightened in his chair. “It was not my intention to express any emotion. I apologize.”  
  
“Oh, it’s okay. I like emotion. And don’t think you’re getting out of answering the question that easily.”  
  
“Very well,” he said. “Are you aware of any particular human custom regarding the appropriate response after one admits a feeling of friendship to another?”  
  
Again, he said t’hy’lahali and again, the translator rendered it friendship.  
  
She shrugged. “Typically, they reciprocate. Why? Did something happen?”  
  
“Do they often express this reciprocation through violence?”  
  
Her expression darkened. “Tell me the entire story from the beginning.”

* * *

“Okay. So I’m a bit confused here. You told Kirk that you think of him as a friend and he got mad?”  
  
“I told him I was _ashamed_ to think of him as a friend.”  
  
“Ah. See, there’s your problem. Humans don’t like that.”  
  
“Do not like what?”  
  
“Being ashamed. Just in general, but especially of the emotions that they like, and friendship is one of those.”  
  
“So you believe that Jim wants me to embrace my… feelings.”  
  
“Yeah! And as for him hitting you, he was on drugs then. I know Kirk, and he would never do that in his right mind.”  
  
Spock nodded. Indeed. That sounded like the man that he knew.  
  
However.  
  
“If Jim wished for me to further express my feelings for him, then logically, he must first reciprocate them and express this reciprocation.”  
  
Gaila looked at him quizzically. “You keep talking like… Okay. These feelings for Jim. What are they specifically?”  
  
“Friendship.”  
  
“Can you explain that a bit? I think maybe our cultures have different ideas about what friendship is.”  
  
“Friendship is the love between two who are one.”  
  
“Like, romantically?”  
  
“It can be, yes.”  
  
“Is it in this instance?”  
  
“On my end.”  
  
“Okay, see, there’s your problem. That’s not what humans mean at all by friendship. I think something got lost in translation.”  
  
“Then what would Jim think I meant?”  
  
“Humans think of friendship as something purely platonic and a lot more casual than what you’re talking about. It has no romantic connotations at all.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
A beat of silence passed while they weighed the implications of that.  
  
“So you like Kirk,” Gaila said, leaning forward and resting her chin in her hands.  
  
“Yes,” Spock said guardedly.  
  
“Tell me absolutely everything.”

* * *

“Bones, Spock hates me.”  
  
“No he does not. Good lord.”  
  
“No, he totally does. He’s been really distant lately. He doesn’t even touch me anymore.”  
  
“When did he touch you before? I thought you two weren’t doing that sort of thing. I wish I didn’t know that much about your life, by the way.”  
  
“He used to touch me in bed—“  
  
“I’m gonna stop you right there.”  
  
“Not like that, you pervert.”  
  
“How the fuck else did you want me to interpret that sentence?”  
  
“We just sleep together.”  
  
Bones stared at him. “Okay, now I’m lost. Are you trying to convince me there’s nothing sexual about you two having sex?”  
  
“No, we aren’t having sex.”  
  
“Kid, you just said that you were sleeping together.”  
  
“Yeah. Sleeping together. As in literally sharing a bed together and just that.”  
“And he touches you in bed?”  
  
“We cuddle.”  
  
“Oh my god. I swear, kid, don’t you dare go messing around and get your heart broke. Damn fool thing to do.”  
  
“What are you talking about? Everything’s been completely innocent so far!”  
  
“That! That right there!” he pointed. “You saying ‘so far.’ That scares me.”  
  
“I’m gonna be fine, Bones, Spock would never do anything to hurt me.”  
  
“What makes you so sure? You already said he’s being distant for no good reason. And ain’t he into that weird unemotional hippie philosophy? Serak or something?”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So, you need someone who’ll be there for you emotionally, and that ain’t Spock.”  
  
“What do you even have against him? You barely know the guy.”  
  
“I don’t have anything against him except for the fact that he’s a cold-blooded emotionless reptile who’s gonna shatter my best friend’s heart into a million pieces and maybe I don’t wanna see that happen.”  
  
“Well, you won’t. Nothing’s even going on between us, Bones. Quit worrying,” he said. “And be nicer to Spock. He’s a good guy. He’s just… a bit repressed.”  
  
He snorted. “Understatement of the year. Man wouldn’t know a loving emotion if it hit him upside the face.”  
  
“Hey, that’s not true.”  
  
“Yes it is.”  
  
“Not,” Jim finished.  
  
“It is so true, you infant.”  
  
“I am not an infant,” he pouted.  
  
“Anybody who kicks up as much a fuss as you do about a simple hypo has no business callin’ themselves an adult.”  
  
“You stab me with those things!”  
  
“Jim, a hypospray is the single most painless medical instrument in use in the twenty-third century, you whiny baby.”  
  
“Yeah, well you found a painful way to administrate it,” he said, rubbing his neck.  
  
One of Jim’s science underlings walked in with a report for him to review, and Bones sighed and stood up. “Well, I gotta get back to sickbay. Have fun with your not-relationship troubles, baby.” The door swooshed shut behind him.  
  
The science ensign raised an eyebrow. “Did Dr. McCoy just call you baby?”  
  
“Not like that,” Jim said absently, scrolling through the report on the padd.

* * *

“Here is your water, sir,” T’Gasfa said, placing the chalice on Sarek’s desk.  
  
“Dismissed,” he said without looking up.  
  
He was reading through the news on his padd. None of it was good. Word of Spock’s elevation in Starfleet had spread like wildfire. There were reports of slave revolts in three sectors already, and they weren’t going down as easily as last time. The slaves seemed to have a new fire within them. Hope.  
  
They actually thought freedom and equality were possible.  
  
It was absurd.  
  
He sipped from his glass absently. Thankfully, none of the revolts had reached Kir. The last revolt here had been so recently put down, there was no way the slaves could possibly mount another so soon. Not on their own, anyway. And there was no one willing to help a slave.  
  
His water tasted…  
  
He spat in panic and immediately shoved two fingers down his throat, vomiting up the poisoned water. He gagged and retched again and again, praying to every sacred deity on Vulcan that he had not been too late, that he had not swallowed too much.  
  
The world began to spin and darken. Sarek heard a thud, and dimly registered that he had hit the floor.

* * *

Sybok rushed through the mansion, leader of the revolting slaves, armed to the teeth and with a lirpa in hand.  
  
“Wait!” he called. “I need to check on something.”  
  
He stopped outside Sarek’s study to find his father lying prone on the floor in a pool of his own vomit, dead.  
  
Sybok smiled.  
  
“To Shi’Kahr!” He yelled, and the slaves answered his cry.

* * *

Sarek awoke with a groan.  
  
He stood up on unsteady feet and looked down in disgust at the mess he was covered in.  
  
There would be time to get a shower and change of clothes later. Right now, he needed to determine the state of things. He gathered himself and exited the study.  
  
The mansion was a ghost town. Eerily empty. It was usually so bustling with life and activity. Sarek strangely felt like an intruder in his own home.  
  
The place had been ransacked, looted. All his valuables were missing. Every item of worth had been stolen by the slaves, no doubt to be used in furthering their cause. The entire mansion was trashed and in shambles, nearly irreparable. He wondered dimly if the slaves had decided to kill Sybok or spare him.  
  
He had likely been kidnapped, especially given that Sarek could not find him. His sympathies aside, he was still the prince of Kir, and he would fetch a hefty ransom.  
  
He left the mansion to find the entire street—the entire neighborhood—was just as deadly silent, if not moreso. Abandoned. Deserted.  
  
He checked his padd, but there was no news, no reports of the revolt. That was strange. Perhaps the slaves had managed to seize control of the media?  
  
If they had done it in Kir, then they could have done it elsewhere as well.  
  
He would walk until he found someone who knew something.  
  
He would walk.


	20. Misunderstanding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was bored? So I started drama needlessly? It was fun as hell to write though lmao
> 
> Sa-reldai = an extremely dubious translation of prince that technically means “male priestess/princess”
> 
> Sa-te’kru = king
> 
> Ko-te’kru = queen

T’hy’lahali. Spock looked into translating it more accurately on his own. It meant t’hy’la-ship, encompassing all the feelings and emotions associated with one’s t’hy’la. It could mean brotherhood, respect, affection… There was no Standard word that perfectly encompassed it. True, friendship was the most direct translation in a literal sense, but its overall cultural meaning was closer to the Terran understanding of the word love, though even that seemed nonspecific and imprecise. It was close, yes, but Spock suspected it wasn’t quite what he meant.  
  
While computing his work, Spock accidentally held the translator a bit too tightly without noticing and caused it to crumple slightly. Several of its key inner components became broken as a result. It was no matter.  
  
“I have elected to cease relying on the Universal Translator in order to communicate,” he announced in the mess hall later.  
  
“That’s great! You think you’ve learned Standard well enough by now?” Nyota asked.  
  
“It is dubious. I ask that you all please point out any foolish mistakes I might make.”  
  
“Something tells me you won’t make that many,” Leonard said dryly.  
  
“Don’t worry, Spock. Your Standard is great,” Jim said, smiling warmly at him, and Spock felt a pleasant heat blossom in his side.

* * *

Spock connected the holovid link that put him in direct communication with Sybok. He held up the ta’al, and his brother responded in kind.  
  
“How fares Kir? I heard there was unrest in the neighboring sectors,” he said.  
  
“There is ‘unrest’ here as well. It is a full-blown revolution, my brother,” he said, his teeth gleaming white in a sharkish grin.  
  
“A revolution, sa-reldai?”  
  
“It is sa-te’kru now. The previous reigning monarch is dead. I have ascended to the throne of Kir.”  
  
Spock blinked. “Your Uncle Saman is dead?”  
  
“Affirmative. I killed him.”  
  
“May I ask why?”  
  
“It is a revolution, my brother! He was a backwards-thinking bigot and a slave-holder. My first act as king was to emancipate everyone in the sector. I have assembled a counsel to create relief and work programs and find as many ways as possible to provide aid to displaced slaves. All that money that was made off of their labor is finally going back to them.”  
  
“Sybok, you have—you have started a war.”  
  
“I am aware. I have promoted T’Pring to general of Kir’s army, of which I have seized control, and Stonn directly underneath her. There have been reports of defectors, but I have given those who remain great incentive to stay.”  
  
Spock decided he most definitely did not want to know what threat that meant. “How are the other sectors responding?”  
  
“Well, so far I’ve had to threaten to invade three of them, and Ko-te’kru T’Vandana did not take me seriously, so now we’re militarily occupying Shi’al. The slaves there are running away and joining my army by the droves. I’ve promised freedom to everyone who fights on the side of it.”  
  
“I—“  
  
“What, don’t tell me I’ve struck you speechless, Spock, have I?” he grinned.  
  
“I believe you have, yes,” he said. “How has Sarek reacted?”  
  
“Sarek is dead. Poisoned by his own slaves. Of course, I gave them the poison, but still, they were the ones who put it in his drink.”  
  
“You killed him?”  
  
“He was our father in name only, Spock. He was not worthy of the title. You know what he did to the Lady Amanda. And unfortunately, he was even more brutal with his slaves before he met her. He was… kinder, during your lifetime,” Sybok said. “The man deserved death and I do not regret that it came about at my hands.”  
  
Spock said nothing, mind reeling in shock. Sybok continued to talk for a few more minutes about the kingship and local politics and then asked what was new aboard the Enterprise.  
  
“I do not have any news as consequential as your own,” Spock said.  
  
Sybok waved that off. “Tell me how things are going anyway. After all, your bond was the catalyst that sparked all of this.”  
  
“I—“ he started. “It is a complicated situation.”  
  
“Explain.”  
  
“I believe I have developed… feelings, for my husband.”  
  
“Spock, how is that in any way complicated? You are bonded to the man. Simply be with him.”  
  
“He does not feel the same way.”  
  
“Are you certain?”  
  
He nodded. “I do not believe he even regards me as a friend.”  
  
Sybok’s eyes narrowed. “Your claims are dubious. He went to great lengths to free you.”  
  
“He did the same for Michael. It is simply his nature to be generous and kind.”  
  
“Do you want me to speak to him?”  
  
“No,” Spock said, a bit quickly. “I am an adult, Sybok. I can handle my own matters.”  
  
“If you insist. Do not hesitate to come to me for help though, my brother.”  
  
“I will not,” Spock promised.  
  
“How is your… training with Starfleet going?” he said, doing his best to mask his distaste.  
  
“Adequate. And your war?”  
  
“Adequate,” he said. “I have realized I made an error.”  
  
Spock waited.  
  
“It was perhaps… hypocritical of me to criticize your choice to enlist, even though my concerns were not of a morally pacifistic nature.”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“Is that all you have to say?”  
  
“I accept your apology.”  
  
“I did not apologize.”  
  
“I accept your apology anyway,” he said. “I hope you will listen to your own advice. Do not lose yourself fighting this war, brother.”  
  
His lips quirked. “I have no intention of doing so.”

* * *

Uhura slid into the seat opposite Kirk in the mess hall. “So I hear you’re having relationship troubles.”  
  
He shrugged.  
  
“Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Jim sighed. “He’s just been really distant lately and I don’t know why.”  
  
“Do you think it could be that he’s weirded out about your, uh, sudden marriage?”  
  
“I thought we got past that,” he said. “I don’t know. Could be?”  
  
She shook her head. “If you already worked it out, then it’s probably not that. Did anything change between you two lately?”  
  
“Uh, well, we’ve sort of practically moved in together,” he said. “Not like formally. He still has his own quarters. But he spends the night in my room more often than not and all his stuff’s there.”  
  
“Really?” she said, surprised she hadn’t heard about that. It seemed like the sort of gossip that would spread like wildfire, and it would be pretty hard to hide, too.  
  
Kirk shrugged. Uhura placed her hand over his.  
  
“Maybe it’s all just… moving a bit fast,” she said. “Maybe you should back off a bit.”  
  
“You think so?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“I guess it has only been a few weeks.”  
  
“Wait, seriously? I thought you guys got together six months ago.”  
  
He frowned in confusion. “How would we have gotten together before we even met?”  
  
Now it was her turn to be confused. “Wait, you’re dating Len, right?”  
  
He laughed. “What? No. I’m not dating anybody. I _wish_ I was dating Spock.” Her words caught up to him. “Wait, so all that stuff you said… You thought I’ve been dating Bones for the past six months?”  
  
She nodded. “Yeah. Everyone has.”  
  
“What do you mean, everyone?”  
  
“The whole ship thinks you’re dating. Engineering has a betting pool on who’s gonna propose first.”  
  
“ _What_?!” he spluttered. “Why would anyone think that?”  
  
“Have you seen you two together?” she asked. “He calls you darlin’ way too often.”  
  
“That’s just Bones though. We’re just friends. That’d be like dating my brother,” he said. “The whole ship thinks we’re together?”  
  
“Uh-huh. That’s why Pike’s been so on his case lately. He wants to make sure he’s treating you right.”  
  
“ _That’s_ what that weird talk was about?” he asked. “Oh my god! Bones is gonna die laughing when he hears about this one.”

* * *

Bones did not die laughing. He went on an angry tirade. And then he reexamined every single ‘weird’ interaction he had had with various crewmembers over the past six months, especially Christopher Pike.  
  
“Dear lord, that time I gave you a medical exam and you had an allergic reaction halfway through and we were in my office for half an hour and then you came out all red and flushed and Pike gave me the strangest look…” He paced, shaking his head. “I’m lucky that man hasn’t thrown me off the damn ship.”  
  
“He’s just my boss, Bones, he probably didn’t even care that much,” Jim said.  
  
He turned on him. “Just your boss? That man’s practically adopted you! He treats you more like a son than your real father does!”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “Oh my god, calm down. I’m sure it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

* * *

“So Spock, how are things going with you and Kirk?” Chris Pike asked.  
  
“Adequate,” he said.  
  
“Just adequate?” he asked. “You’re okay with how things are between him and Leonard, right?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“You know, with their… involvement.”  
  
“Jim informed me that they are not involved.”  
  
“Really?” Pike frowned. “Why would he say that?”  
  
“I assumed he said it because it was the truth.”  
  
“But he and Bones have been dating for over six months now.”  
  
“That must be false. Jim would not lie to me.”  
  
“…I think I’m gonna have to have a talk with Jim.”

* * *

Pike pounded on the door to Jim’s quarters and was quickly admitted to find both him and the doctor sitting there, drinking.  
  
“Did you lie to Spock?” he asked, not one to beat around the bush.  
  
“What?” Jim asked.  
  
“Did you lie to Spock?” he repeated, slower. “Because he told me that you said you two aren’t dating, and I _know_ that’s not true. What, are you planning on stringing him along or something? I thought you were better than this, Kirk.”  
  
“I didn’t lie to him, I swear. Bones and I really aren’t dating.”  
  
Pike paused. “What?”  
  
“We aren’t dating.”  
  
“Never have been, never will be,” Bones said, taking a drink.  
  
“Wow, Bones, thanks. Really feeling the love here.”  
  
Pike looked between the two of them in confusion. “Seriously?”  
  
Jim nodded, giving him The Raised Eyebrow of Duh and everything.  
  
“Well, this is awkward,” Chris said. “I’ll let you two get back to… uh, whatever.”

* * *

Sarek walked.  
  
The city was empty. Deserted. Burnt to a crisp and hollowed out, ravaged from the inside out. Destroyed.  
  
He walked past it.  
  
There was no one and nothing left inside. It was a husk, a shell of its former glory. There was no sense mourning his lost home. What had been done could not be changed. Kaiidth.  
  
The Forge was hot and endless, a scorching plane of glass that passed itself off as a desert. It wore its name well. It truly was like being inside of a forge.  
  
Days passed, and Sarek had nothing to eat or drink. He was beginning to regret leaving the city. Everything of worth and every usable resource had been taken, of course, but at least there was shade.  
  
Just as he was on the brink of collapse, he saw them, appearing on the horizon like a mirage.  
  
Rescue.  
  
With a new burst of strength, he pushed forward.


End file.
